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War 

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ARTHUR CONAN 
DOYLE 

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odder & Stoughton London New York Toronf • 



THE GERMAN WAR 






THE GERMAN WAR 



BY 

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE 

AUTHOR OF "THE GREAT BOER WAR," ETC. 



HODDER AND STOUGHTON 

LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO 

MCMXIV 



^v 






!b"l 



Printed in Great Britain by Bazell, Watson & Viney, Ld, 
London and Aylesbury 



PREFACE 

These essays, upon different phases of the 
wonderful world-drama which has made our 
lifetime memorable, would be unworthy of 
republication were it not that at such a time 
every smallest thing which may help to clear 
up a doubt, to elucidate the justice of our 
cause, or to accentuate the desperate need of 
national effort, should be thrown into the 
scale. The longest essay appeared in The 
Fortnightly Review and the shorter ones for 
the most part in The Daily Chronicle. I 
have left them as written at the time, even 
where after-events have caused some modi- 
fication of my views. 

Arthur Conan Doyle. 



WlNDLESHAM, CROWBOROUGH, 
November 1914. 



CONTENTS 



I 

PAGE 

THE CAUSES OF THE WAR .... I 



II 

THE WORLD-WAR CONSPIRACY ... 32 

III 

THE DEVIL'S DOCTRINE 41 

IV 

THE GREAT GERMAN PLOT .... 55 



THE " CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY " . . 65 



Vll 



viii CONTENTS 

VI 

A POLICY OF MURDER 

VII 

MADNESS .... 



PAGE 

79 



89 



VIII 

GREAT BRITAIN AND THE NEXT WAR . . 99 



IX 

AFTERTHOUGHTS ...... 144 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 

This article, stating the British case, was issued as a re- 
cruiting pamphlet in Great Britain, but was used abroad 
as a simple explanation which would enable neutrals to 
understand the true facts. It was published in full by 
fifty leading journals in the United States, and was trans- 
lated into Dutch and Danish, 25,000 copies being dis- 
tributed in each country. 

The causes of the war are only of moment 
to us, at this stage, in that we gain more 
strength in our arms and more iron in our 
souls by a knowledge that it is for all that is 
honourable and sacred for which we fight. 
What really concerns us is that we are in a 
fight for our national life, that we must fight 
through to the end, and that each and all of 
us must help, in his own fashion, to the last 
ounce of his strength, that this end may be 
victory. That is the essence of the situation. 
It is not words and phrases that we need, but 
men, men — and always more men. If words 
1 



2 THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 

can bring the men, then they are of avail. If 
not, they may well wait for the times to mend. 
But if there is a doubt in the mind of any 
man as to the justice of his country's quarrel, 
then even a writer may find work ready to 
his hand. 

Let us cast our minds back upon the events 
which have led up to this conflict. They 
may be divided into two separate classes — 
those which prepared the general situation, 
and those which caused the special quarrel. 
Each of these I will treat in its turn. 

It is a matter of common knowledge, one 
which a man must be blind and deaf not to 
understand, that for many years Germany, 
intoxicated by her success in war and by her 
increase of wealth, has regarded the British 
Empire with eyes of jealousy and hatred. It 
has never been alleged by those who gave 
expression to this almost universal national 
passion that Great Britain had in any way, 
either historically or commercially, done 
Germany a mischief. Even our most bitter 
traducers, when asked to give any definite 
historical reasons for their dislike, were 
compelled to put forward such ludicrous 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 3 

excuses as that the British had abandoned 
the Prussian King in the year 1761, quite 
oblivious of the fact that the same Prussian 
King had abandoned his own allies in the 
same war under far more damaging circum- 
stances, acting up to his own motto that no 
promises are binding where the vital interests 
of a State are in question. With all their 
malevolence they could give no examples of 
any ill turn done by us until their deliberate 
policy had forced us into antagonism. On 
the other hand, a long list of occasions could 
very easily be compiled on which we had 
helped them in some common cause from the 
days of Marlborough to those of Blucher. 
Until the twentieth century had turned they 
had no possible cause for political hatred 
against us. In commerce our record was even 
more clear. Never in any way had we inter- 
fered with that great development of trade 
which has turned them from one of the 
poorest to one of the richest of European 
States. Our markets were open to them 
untaxed, whilst our own manufactures paid 
20 per cent, in Germany. The markets of 
India, of Egypt, and of every portion of the 



4 THE CAUSES OF THE WAK 

Empire which had no self-appointed tariff, 
were as open to German goods as to British 
ones. Nothing could possibly have been 
more generous than our commercial treat- 
ment. No doubt there was some grumbling 
when cheap imitations of our own goods were 
occasionally found to oust the originals from 
their markets. Such a feeling was but natural 
and human. But in all matters of com- 
merce, as in all matters political before the 
dawn of this century, they have no shadow 
of a grievance against us. 

And yet they hated us with a most bitter 
hatred, a hatred which long antedates the 
days when we were compelled to take a 
definite stand against them. In all sorts of 
ways this hatred showed itself — in the dia- 
tribes of professors, in the pages of books, in 
the columns of the Press. Usually it was a 
sullen, silent dislike. Sometimes it would 
flame up suddenly into bitter utterance, as at 
the time of the unseemly dispute around the 
deathbed of the Emperor's father, or on the 
occasion of the Jameson Raid. And yet this 
bitter antagonism was in no way reciprocated 
in this country. If a poll had been taken at 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 5 

any time up to the end of the century as to 
which European country was our natural 
ally, the vote would have gone overwhelmingly 
for Germany. " America first and then Ger- 
many" would have been the verdict of nine 
men out of ten. But then occurred two events 
which steadied the easy-going Briton, and 
made him look more intently and with a more 
questioning gaze at his distant cousin over 
the water. Those two events were the Boer 
War and the building of the German fleet. 
The first showed us, to our amazement, the 
bitter desire which Germany had to do us 
some mischief, the second made us realise 
that she was forging a weapon with which 
that desire might be fulfilled. 

We are most of us old enough to remem- 
ber the torrent of calumny and insult which 
was showered upon us in the day of our 
temporary distress by the nation to whom 
we had so often been a friend and an ally. 
It is true that other nations treated us little 
better, and yet their treatment hurt us less. 
The difference as it struck men at the time 
may be summarised in this passage from a 
British writer of the period. 



6 THE CAUSES OF THE 'WAR 

" But it was very different with Germany," 
he says. " Again and again in the world's 
history we have been the friends and the 
allies of these people. It was so in the days 
of Marlborough, in those of the Great 
Frederick, and in those of Napoleon. When 
we could not help them with men we 
helped them with money. Our fleet has 
crushed their enemies. And now, for the 
first time in history, we have had a chance 
of seeing who were our friends in Europe, 
and nowhere have we met more hatred 
and more slander than from the German 
Press and the German people. Their most 
respectable journals have not hesitated to 
represent the British troops — troops every 
bit as humane and as highly disciplined as 
their own — not only as committing outrages 
on person and property, but even as mur- 
dering women and children. 

" At first this unexpected phenomenon 
merely surprised the British people, then it 
pained them, and finally, after two years of 
it, it has roused a deep, enduring anger in 
their minds." 

He goes on to say, " The continued attacks 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 7 

upon us have left an enduring feeling of re- 
sentment, which will not and should not die 
away in this generation. It is not too much 
to say that five years ago a complete defeat 
of Germany in a European war would have 
certainly caused British intervention. Public 
sentiment and racial affinity would never 
have allowed us to see her really go to the 
wall. And now it is certain that in our life- 
time no British guinea and no soldier's life 
would under any circumstances be spent for 
such an end. That is one strange result of the 
Boer War, and in the long run it is possible 
that it may prove not the least important." 
Such was the prevailing mood of the nation 
when they perceived Germany, under the 
lead of her Emperor, following up her expres- 
sions of enmity by starting with restless 
energy to build up a formidable fleet, adding 
programme to programme, out of all possible 
proportion to the German commerce to be 
defended or to the German coastline exposed 
to attack. Already vainglorious boasts were 
made that Germany was the successor to 
Britain upon the seas. " The Admiral of the 
Atlantic greets the Admiral of the Pacific," 



8 THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 

said the Kaiser in a message to the Czar. 
What was Britain to do under this growing 
menace ? So long as she was isolated the 
diplomacy of Germany might form some 
naval coalition against her. She took the 
steps which were necessary for her own safety, 
and without forming an alliance she com- 
posed her differences with France and Russia 
and drew closer the friendship which united 
her with her old rival across the Channel. 
The first-fruit of the new German fleet was 
the entente cordiale. We had found our enemy. 
It was necessary that we should find our 
friends. Thus we were driven into our 
present combination. 

And now we had to justify our friendship. 
For the first time we were compelled to openly 
oppose Germany in the deep and dangerous 
game of world politics. They wished to see 
if our understanding was a reality or a sham. 
Could they drive a wedge between us by 
showing that we were a fair-weather friend 
whom any stress would alienate. Twice they 
tried it, once in 1906 when they bullied France 
into a conference at Algeciras, but found that 
Britain was firm at her side, and again in 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 9 

1 91 1 when in a time of profound peace they 
stirred up trouble by sending a gunboat to 
Agadir, and pushed matters to the very edge 
of war. But no threats induced Britain to 
be false to her mutual insurance with France. 
Now for the third and most fatal time they 
have demanded that we forswear ourselves 
and break our own bond lest a worse thing 
befall us. Blind and foolish, did they not 
know by past experience that we would keep 
our promise given ? In their madness they 
have wrought an irremediable evil to them- 
selves, to us, and to all Europe. 

I have shown that we have in very truth 
never injured nor desired to injure Germany 
in commerce, nor have we opposed her poli- 
tically until her own deliberate actions drove 
us into the camp of her opponents. But it 
may well be asked why then did they dislike 
us, and why did they weave hostile plots 
against us ? It was that, as it seemed to 
them, and as indeed it actually may have 
been, we independently of our own wills 
stood between Germany and that world 
empire of which she dreamed. This was 
caused by circumstances over which we had 



io THE CAUSES OF THE (WAR 

no control and which we could not modify if 
we had wished to do so. Britain, through her 
maritime power and the energy of her mer- 
chants and people, had become a great world 
power when Germany was still unformed. 
Thus, when she had grown to her full stature 
she found that the choice places of the world 
and those most fitted for the spread of a 
transplanted European race were already 
filled up. It was not a matter which we could 
help, nor could we alter it, since Canada, 
Australia, and South Africa would not, even 
if we could be imagined to have wished it, 
be transferred to German rule. And yet the 
Germans chafed, and if we can put ourselves 
in their places we may admit that it was 
galling that the surplus of their manhood 
should go to build up the strength of an alien 
and possibly a rival State. So far we could 
see their grievance, or rather their misfortune, 
since no one was in truth to blame in the 
matter. Had their needs been openly and 
reasonably expressed, and had the two 
States moved in concord in the matter, it is 
difficult to think that no helpful solution of 
any kind could have been found. 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR n 

But the German method of approaching 
the problem has never been to ask sympathy 
and co-operation, but to picture us as a 
degenerate race from whom anything might 
be gained by playing upon our imagined 
weakness and cowardice. A nation which 
attends quietly to its own sober business must, 
according to their mediaeval notions, be a 
nation of decadent poltroons. If we fight 
our battles by means of free volunteers in- 
stead of enforced conscripts, then the military 
spirit must be dead amongst us. Perhaps, 
even in this short campaign, they have added 
this delusion also to the dust-bin of their 
many errors. But such was their absurd 
self-deception about the most virile of Euro- 
pean races. Did we propose disarmament, 
then it was not humanitarianism but 
cowardice that prompted us, and their answer 
was to enlarge their programme. Did we 
suggest a navy-building holiday, it was but 
a cloak for our weakness, and an incitement 
that they should redouble their efforts. Our 
decay had become a part of their national 
faith. At first the wish may have been the 
father to the thought, but soon under the 



12 THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 

reiterated assertions of their crazy professors 
the proposition became indisputable. Bern- 
hardi in his book upon the next war cannot 
conceal the contempt in which he has learned 
to hold us. Niebuhr long ago had prophesied 
the coming fall of Britain, and every year was 
believed to bring it nearer and to make it 
more certain. To these jaundiced eyes all 
seemed yellow, when the yellowness lay only 
in themselves. Our army, our navy, our 
Colonies, all were equally rotten. " Old 
England, old, indeed, and corrupt, rotten 
through and through." One blow and the 
vast sham would fly to pieces, and from those 
pieces the Victor could choose his reward. 
Listen to Professor Treitschke, a man who, 
above all others, has been the evil genius of 
his country, and has done most to push it 
towards this abyss : "A thing that is wholly 
a sham," he cried, in allusion to our Empire, 
" cannot, in this universe of ours, endure for 
ever. It may endure for a day, but its doom 
is certain." Were ever words more true when 
applied to the narrow bureaucracy and 
swaggering Junkerdom of Prussia, the most 
artificial and ossified sham that ever our 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 13 

days have seen ? See which will crack first, 
our democracy or this, now that both have 
been plunged into the furnace together. The 
day of God's testing has come, and we shall 
see which can best abide it. 

I have tried to show that we are in no way 
to blame for the hostility which has grown 
up between us. So far as it had any solid 
cause at all it has arisen from fixed factors, 
which could no more be changed by us than 
the geographical position which has laid us 
right across their exit to the oceans of the 
world. That this deeply-rooted national senti- 
ment, which for ever regarded us as the Car- 
thage to which they were destined to play 
the part of Rome, would, sooner or later, have 
brought about war between us, is, in my 
opinion, beyond all doubt. But it was 
planned to come at the moment which was 
least favourable for Britain. " Even English 
attempts at a rapprochement must not blind 
us to the real situation," says Bernhardi. 
" We may, at most, use them to delay the 
necessary and inevitable war until we may 
fairly imagine we have some prospect of 
success." A more shameless sentence was 



14 THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 

never penned, and one stands marvelling 
which is the more grotesque — the cynicism of 
the sentiment, or the folly which gave such a 
warning to the victim. For be it remembered 
that Bernhardi's words are to be taken very 
seriously, for they are not the ravings of 
some Pan-German monomaniac, but the con- 
sidered views of the foremost military writer 
of Germany, one who is in touch with those 
inner circles whose opinions are the springs 
of national policy. " Our last and greatest 
reckoning is to be with Great Britain," said 
the bitter Treitschke. Sooner or later the 
shock was to come. Germany sat brooding 
over the chessboard of the world waiting for 
the opening which should assure a winning 
game. 

It was clear that she should take her 
enemies separately rather than together. If 
Britain were attacked, it was almost certain 
that France and Russia would stand by her 
side. But if, on the contrary, the quarrel 
could be made with these two Powers, and 
especially with Russia, in the first instance, 
then it was by no means so certain that Great 
Britain would be drawn into the struggle. 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 15 

Public opinion has to be strongly moved 
before our country can fight, and public 
opinion under a Liberal Government might 
well be divided upon the subject of Russia. 
Therefore, if the quarrel could be so arranged 
as to seem to be entirely one between Teuton 
and Slav there was a good chance that 
Britain would remain undecided until the 
swift German sword had done its work. 
Then, with the grim acquiescence of our 
deserted Allies, the still bloody sword would 
be turned upon ourselves, and that great 
final reckoning would have come. 

Such was the plan, and fortune favoured 
it. A brutal murder had, not for the first 
time, put Servia into a position where a State 
may be blamed for the sins of individuals. 
An ultimatum was launched so phrased that 
it was impossible for any State to accept it 
as it stood and yet remain an independent 
State. At the first sign of argument or re- 
monstrance the Austrian army marched upon 
Belgrade. Russia, which had been already 
humiliated in 1908 by the forcible annexation 
of Bosnia, could not possibly submit a second 
time to the Caudine Forks. She laid her 



16 THE CAUSES OF THE /WAR 

hand upon her sword-hilt. Germany sprang 
to the side of her Ally. France ranged her- 
self with Russia. Like a thunderclap the war 
of the nations had begun. 

So far all had worked well for German 
plans. Those of the British public who were 
familiar with the past and could look into 
the future might be well aware that our 
interests were firmly bound with those of 
France, and that if our faggots were not tied 
together they would assuredly be snapped 
each in its turn. But the unsavoury assas- 
sination which had been so cleverly chosen as 
the starting-point of the war bulked large in 
the eyes of our people, and, setting self- 
interest to one side, the greater part of the 
public might well have hesitated to enter into 
a quarrel where the cause seemed remote and 
the issues ill-defined. What was it to us if 
a Slav or a Teuton collected the harbour dues 
of Salonica ! So the question might have 
presented itself to the average man who in 
the long run is the ruler of this country and 
the autocrat of its destinies. In spite of all 
the wisdom of our statesmen, it is doubtful 
if on such a quarrel we could have gained 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 17 

that national momentum which might carry 
us to victory. But at that very moment 
Germany took a step which removed the 
last doubt from the most cautious of us and 
left us in a position where we must either 
draw our sword or stand for ever dishonoured 
and humiliated before the world. The action 
demanded of us was such a compound of 
cowardice and treachery that we ask our- 
selves in dismay what can we ever have done 
that could make others for one instant 
imagine us to be capable of so dastardly a 
course? Yet that it was really supposed 
that we could do it, and that it was not 
merely put forward as an excuse for drawing 
us into war, is shown by the anger and con- 
sternation of the Kaiser and his Chancellor 
when we drew back from what the British 
Prime Minister has described as "an infamous 
proposal." One has only to read our Am- 
bassador's description of his interview with 
the German Chancellor after our decision 
was announced, " so evidently overcome by the 
news of our action," to see that through some 
extraordinary mental aberration the German 
rulers did actually believe that a vital treaty 
2 



18 THE CAUSES OF THE -WAR 

with Britain's signature upon it could be 
regarded by this country as a mere " scrap 
of paper." 

What was this treaty which it was proposed 
so lightly to set aside ? It was the guarantee 
of the neutrality of Belgium signed in 1839 
(confirmed verbally and in writing by Bis- 
marck in 1870), by Prussia, France, and 
Britain, each of whom pledged their word to 
observe and to enforce it. On the strength of 
it Belgium had relied for her security amidst 
her formidable neighbours. On the strength 
of it also France had lavished all her de- 
fences upon her eastern frontier, and left 
her northern exposed to attack. Britain had 
guaranteed the treaty, and Britain could be 
relied upon. Now, on the first occasion of 
testing the value of her word it was supposed 
that she would regard the treaty as a worth- 
less scrap of paper, and stand by unmoved 
while the little State which had trusted her 
was flooded by the armies of the invader. 
It was unthinkable, and yet the wisest brains 
of Germany seem to have persuaded them- 
selves that we had sunk to such depths of 
cowardly indolence that even this might go 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 19 

through. Surely they also have been hypno- 
tised by those foolish dreams of Britain's 
degeneration, from which they will have so 
terrible an awakening. 

As a matter of fact, the General Staff 
had got ahead of the diplomatists, and the 
German columns were already over the border 
while the point was being debated at Berlin. 
There was no retreat from the position which 
had been taken up. "It is to us a vital 
matter of strategy and is beyond argument/' 
said the German soldier. " It is to us a vital 
matter of honour and is beyond argument," 
answered the British statesman. The die 
was cast. No compromise was possible. 
Would Britain keep her word or would she 
not ? That was the sole question at issue. 
And what answer save one could any Briton 
give to it ? "1 do not believe," said our 
Prime Minister, "that any nation ever 
entered into a great controversy with a 
clearer conscience and stronger conviction 
that she is fighting, not for aggression, not for 
the maintenance of her own selfish interest, 
but in defence of principles the maintenance 
of which is vital to the civilisation of the 



20 THE CAUSES OF THE )WAR 

world." So he spoke, and History will 
endorse his words, for we surely have our 
quarrel just. 

So much for the events which have led us 
to war. Now for a moment let us glance at 
what we may have to hope for, what we may 
have to fear, and above all what we must each 
of us do that we win through to a lasting peace. 

What have we to gain if we win ? That 
we have nothing material to gain, no colonies 
which we covet, no possessions of any sort 
that we desire, is the final proof that the war 
has not been provoked by us. No nation 
would deliberately go out of its way to wage 
so hazardous and costly a struggle when 
there is no prize for victory. But one enor- 
mous indirect benefit we will gain if we can 
make Germany a peaceful and harmless State. 
We will surely break her naval power and 
take such steps that it shall not be a menace 
to us any more. It was this naval power, 
with its rapid increase, and the need that we 
should ever, as Mr. Churchill has so well 
expressed it, be ready at our average moment 
to meet an attack at their chosen moment — 
it was this which has piled up our war esti- 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 21 

mates during the last ten years until they 
have bowed us down. With such enormous 
sums spent upon ships and guns, great masses 
of capital were diverted from the ordinary 
channels of trade, while an even more serious 
result was that our programmes of social 
reform had to be curtailed from want of the 
money which could finance them. Let the 
menace of that lurking fleet be withdrawn- — 
the nightmare of those thousand hammers 
working day and night in forging engines for 
our destruction, and our estimates will once 
again be those of a civilised Christian country, 
while our vast capital will be turned from 
measures of self-protection to those of self- 
improvement. Should our victory be com- 
plete, there is little which Germany can yield 
to us save the removal of that shadow which 
has darkened us so long. But our children 
and our children's children will never, if we 
do our work well now, look across the North 
Sea with the sombre thoughts which have 
so long been ours, while their lives will be 
brightened and elevated by money which we, 
in our darker days, have had to spend upon 
our ships and our guns. 



22 THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 

Consider, on the other hand, what we 
should suffer if we were to lose. All the 
troubles of the last ten years would be with 
us still, but in a greatly exaggerated form. A 
larger and stronger Germany would dominate 
Europe and would overshadow our lives. 
Her coast-line would be increased, her ports 
would face our own, her coaling stations would 
be in every sea, and her great army, greater 
then than ever, would be within striking 
distance of our shores. To avoid sinking for 
ever into the condition of a dependant, we 
should be compelled to have recourse to 
rigid compulsory service, and our diminished 
revenues would be all turned to the needs of 
self-defence. Such would be the miserable 
condition in which we should hand on to our 
children that free and glorious empire which 
we inherited in all the fulness of its richness 
and its splendour from those strong fathers 
who have built it up. What peace of mind, 
what self-respect could be left for us in the 
remainder of our lives ? The weight of dis- 
honour would lie always upon our hearts. 
And yet this will be surely our fate and our 
future if we do not nerve our souls and brace 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 23 

our arms for victory. No regrets will avail, 
no excuses will help, no after-thoughts can 
profit us. It is now — now — even in these 
weeks and months that are passing that the 
final reckoning is being taken, and when once 
the sum is made up no further effort can 
change it. What are our lives or our labours, 
our fortunes or even our families, when com- 
pared with the life or death of the great 
mother of us all ? We are but the leaves of 
the tree. What matter if we flutter down 
to-day or to-morrow, so long as the great 
trunk stands and the burrowing roots are 
firm ? Happy the man who can die with the 
thought that in this greatest crisis of all he 
has served his country to the uttermost ; but 
who would bear the thoughts of him who 
lives on with the memory that he has shirked 
his duty and failed his country at the moment 
of her need ? 

There is a settled and assured future if we 
win. There is darkness and trouble if we 
lose. But if we take a broader sweep and 
trace the meanings of this contest as they 
affect others than ourselves, then ever greater, 
more glorious are the issues for which we 



24 THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 

fight. For the whole world stands at a turn- 
ing-point of its history, and one or other of 
two opposite principles, the rule of the soldier 
or the rule of the citizen, must now prevail. 
In this sense we fight for the masses of the 
German people, as some day they will under- 
stand, to free them from that formidable 
military caste which has used and abused 
them, spending their bodies in an unjust war 
and poisoning their minds by every device 
which could inflame them against those who 
wish nothing save to live at peace with them. 
We fight for the strong, deep Germany of 
old, the Germany of music and of philosophy, 
against this monstrous modern aberration the 
Germany of blood and of iron, the Germany 
from which, instead of the old things of 
beauty, there come to us only the rant of 
scolding professors with their final reckonings, 
their Welt-politik, and their Godless theories 
of the Superman who stands above morality 
and to whom all humanity shall be subser- 
vient. Instead of the world-inspiring phrases 
of a Goethe or a Schiller, what are the words 
in the last decade which have been quoted 
across the sea ? Are they not always the 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 25 

ever-recurring words of wrath from one ill- 
balanced man ? " Strike them with the 
mailed fist." " Leave such a name behind 
you as Attila and his Huns." " Turn your 
weapons even upon your own flesh and blood 
at my command." These are the messages 
which have come from this perversion of a 
nation's soul. 

But the matter lies deep. The Hohen- 
zollerns and the Hapsburgs have used their 
peoples as a great landowner might use the 
serfs upon his estate. It was, and is, their 
openly expressed theory that they were in 
their position by the grace of God, that they 
owed no reckoning to any man, and that 
kingdom and folk were committed for better 
or worse to their charge. Round this theory 
of the dark ages there gathered all the forces 
of the many Courts of the Empire, all the 
nobility who make so huge a class in Germanic 
countries, all the vast army to whom strict 
discipline and obedience were the breath of 
life, all the office-holders of the State, all the 
purveyors of warlike stores. These and their 
like were the natural setting to such a central 
idea. Court influence largely controlled the 



26 THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 

teaching at schools and universities, and so 
the growing twig could be bent. But all these 
forces together could not have upheld so 
dangerous and unnatural a theory had it not 
been for the influence of a servile Press. 

How that Press was managed, how the 
thoughts of the people could be turned to 
the right or the left with the same precision 
as a platoon of Grenadiers, has been shown 
clearly enough in the Memoirs of Bismarck. 
Public opinion was poisoned at its very 
roots. The average citizen lived in a false 
atmosphere where everything was distorted 
to his vision. He saw his Kaiser, not as 
an essentially weak and impetuous man 
with a dangerous entourage who were 
ever at his ear, but as Germany personified, 
an angel with a flaming sword, beating 
back envious assailants from the beloved 
Fatherl?nd. He saw his neighbours not as 
peaceful nations who had no possible desire 
to attack him, but, on the contrary, lived 
in constant fear of him, but as a band of 
envious and truculent conspirators who could 
only be kept in order by the sudden stamp of 
the jackboot and the menacing clatter of the 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 27 

sabre. He insensibly imbibed the Nietzsche 
doctrine that the immorality of the Superman 
may be as colossal as his strength and that 
the slave-evangel of Christianity was super- 
seded by a sterner law. Thus when he saw 
acts which his reason must have told him were 
indefensible, he was still narcotised by this 
conception of some new standard of right. 
He saw his Kaiser at the time of a petty 
humiliation to Great Britain sending a tele- 
gram of congratulation to the man who had 
inflicted this rebuff. Could that be approved 
by reason ? At a time when all Europe was 
shuddering over the Armenian massacres he 
saw this same Kaiser paying a complimentary 
visit to the Sultan whose hands were still 
wet with the blood of murdered Christians. 
Could that be reconciled with what is right ? 
A little later he saw the Kaiser once again 
pushing himself into Mediterranean politics, 
where no direct German interest lay, and 
endeavouring to tangle up the French develop- 
ments in Northern Africa by provocative 
personal appearances at Morocco, and, 
later, by sending a gunboat to intrude 
upon a scene of action which had already 



28 THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 

by the Treaty of Algeciras been allotted to 
France. 

How could an honest German whose mind 
was undebauched by a controlled Press justify 
such an interference as that ? He is or 
should be aware that in annexing Bosnia, 
Austria was tearing up a treaty without the 
consent of the other signatories, and that his 
own country was supporting and probably 
inciting her ally to this public breach of 
faith. Could he honestly think that this was 
right ? And, finally, he must know, for his 
own Chancellor has publicly proclaimed it, 
that the Invasion of Belgium was a breach 
of international right, and that Germany, or 
rather, Prussia, had perjured herself upon 
the day that the first of her soldiers passed 
over the frontier. How can he explain all 
this to himself save on a theory that might is 
right, that no moral law applies to the Super- 
man, and that so long as one hews one's way 
through the rest can matter little ? To such 
a point of degradation have public morals 
been brought by the infernal teachings of 
Prussian military philosophy, dating back as 
far as Frederick the Second, but intensified by 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 29 

the exhortations of Press and professors dur- 
ing our own times. The mind of the average 
kindly German citizen has been debauched 
and yet again debauched until it needed just 
such a world crisis as this to startle him at 
last from his obsession and show him his posi- 
tion and that of his country in its true relation 
with humanity and progress. 

Thus I say that for the German who stands 
outside the ruling classes our victory would 
bring a lasting relief, and some hope that in 
future his destiny should be controlled by his 
own judgment and not by the passions or 
interests of those against whom he has at pre- 
sent no appeal. A system which has brought 
disaster to Germany and chaos to all Europe 
can never, one would think, be resumed, and 
amid the debris of his Empire the German 
may pick up that precious jewel of personal 
freedom which is above the splendour of 
foreign conquest. A Hapsburg or a Hohen- 
zollern may find his true place as the servant 
rather than the master of a nation. But 
apart from Germany, look at the effects which 
our victory must have over the whole wide 
world. Everywhere it will mean the triumph 



30 THE CAUSES OF THE iWAR 

of reasoned democracy, of public debate, of 
ordered freedom in which every man is an 
active unit in the system of his own govern- 
ment ; whilst our defeat would stand for a 
victory to a privileged class, the thrusting 
down of the civilian by the arrogance and 
intolerance of militarism, and the subjection 
of all that is human and progressive to all 
that is cruel, narrow, and reactionary. 

This is the stake for which we play, and the 
world will lose or gain as well as we. You may 
well come, you democratic over-sea men of our 
blood, to rally round us now, for all that you 
cherish, all that is bred in your very bones, 
is that for which we fight. And you, lovers 
of Freedom in every land, we claim at least 
your prayers and your wishes, for if our 
sword be broken you will be the poorer. But 
fear not, for our sword will not be broken, 
nor shall it ever drop from our hands until 
this matter is for ever set in order. If every 
ally we have upon earth were to go down in 
blood and ruin, still would we fight through 
to the appointed end. Defeat shall not 
daunt us. Inconclusive victory shall not 
turn us from our purpose. The grind of 



THE CAUSES OF THE WAR 31 

poverty and the weariness of hopes deferred 
shall not blunt the edge of our resolve. With 
God's help we shall go to the end, and when 
that goal is reached it is our prayer that a 
.new era shall come as our reward, an era in 
which, by common action of State with State, 
mutual hatreds and strivings shall be ap- 
peased, land shall no longer be estranged 
from land, and huge armies and fleets will 
be nightmares of the past. Thus, as ever, the 
throes of evil may give birth to good. Till 
then our task stands clear before us — a task 
that will ask for all we have in strength and 
resolution. Have you who read this played 
your part to the highest ? If not, do it now, 
or stand for ever shamed. 



II 

THE WORLD-WAR CONSPIRACY 

It is instructive and interesting now, 1 before 
fresh great events and a new situation obliter- 
ate the old impressions, to put it on record 
how things seemed to some of us before the 
blow fell. A mental position often seems in- 
credible when looked back to from some new 
standpoint. 

I am one of those who were obstinate in 
refusing to recognise Germany's intentions. 
I argued, I wrote, I joined the Anglo-German 
Friendship Society ; I did everything I could 
for the faith that was in me. But early last 
year my views underwent a complete change, 
and I realised that I had been wrong, and 
that the thing which seemed too crazy and 
too wicked to be true actually was true. I 
recorded my conversion at the time in an 

1 August 20, 1914. 
32 



THE WORLD-WAR CONSPIRACY 33 

article entitled " Great Britain and the Next 
War " in the Fortnightly of March, and read- 
ing over that article I find a good deal which 
fits very closely to the present situation. 
Forecasts are dangerous, but there is not 
much there which I would wish to withdraw. 
What brought about my change of view was 
reading Bernhardi's book on Germany and 
the next war. 

Up to then I had imagined that all this 
sabre-rattling was a sort of boyish exuber- 
ance on the part of a robust young nation 
which had a fancy to clank about the world 
in jackboots. Some of it also came, as it 
seemed to me, from a perfectly natural 
jealousy, and some as the result of the preach- 
ing of those extraordinary professors whose 
idiotic diatribes have done so much to poison 
the minds of Young Germany. This was 
clear enough. But I could not believe that 
there was a conspiracy hatching for a world- 
war, in which the command of the sea would 
be challenged as well as that of the land. No 
motive seemed to me to exist for so monstrous 
an upheaval, and no prize to await Germany, 
if she won, which could at all balance her 

3 



34 THE WORUWAR CONSPIRACY 

enormous risks if she lost. Besides, one 
imagined that civilisation and Christianity 
did stand for something, and that it was in- 
conceivable that a nation with pretensions 
to either the one or the other could at this 
date of the world's history lend itself to a 
cold-blooded, barbarous conspiracy by which 
it built up its strength for a number of years 
with the intention of falling at a fitting 
moment upon its neighbours, without any 
cause of quarrel save a general desire for 
aggrandisement . 

All this, I say, I could not bring myself to 
believe. But I read Bernhardi's book, and 
then I could not help believing. I wrote an 
article in the hope that others who had been 
as blind as myself might also come to see 
the truth. For who was Bernhardi ? He 
was one of the most noted officers in the 
German army. And here was a book ad- 
dressed to his own fellow-countrymen, in 
which these sentiments were set forth. You 
could not set such a document aside and treat 
it as of no account. As I said at the time, 
" We should be mad if we did not take very 
serious notice of the warning. ,, 



THE WORLD-WAR CONSPIRACY 35 

But the strange thing is that there should 
have been a warning. There is a quaint 
simplicity in the German mind, which has 
shown itself again and again in the recent 
events. But this is surely the supreme 
example of it. One would imagine that the 
idea that the book could be translated and 
read by his intended victims had never 
occurred to the author. As a famous soldier, 
it is impossible to believe that he was not in 
touch with the General Staff, and he outlines 
a policy which has some reason, therefore, to 
be looked upon as an official one. It is as 
bright a performance as if some one on Lord 
Roberts's staff had written a description of 
the Paardeberg flank march and sent it to 
Cronje some weeks before it was carried out. 
And yet it was not an isolated example, for 
Von Edelsheim, who actually belongs to this 
amazing General Staff, published a shorter 
sketch, setting forth how his country would 
deal with the United States — an essay which 
is an extraordinary example of bombastic 
ignorance. Such indiscretions can only be 
explained as manifestations of an inflated 
national arrogance, which has blown itself up 



36 THE iWORLD-^WAR CONSPIRACY 

into a conviction that Germany was so sure 
of winning that it mattered little whether her 
opponents were upon their guard or not. 

But Bernhardi's programme, as outlined in 
his book, is actually being carried through. 
The whole weight of the attack was to be 
thrown upon France. Russia was to be held 
back during her slow mobilisation, and then 
the victorious legions from Paris were to 
thunder across in their countless troop trains 
from the western to the eastern firing-line. 
Britain was to be cajoled into keeping aloof 
until her fate was ripe. Then her fleet was 
to be whittled down by submarines, mines, 
and torpedo-boats until the numbers were 
more equal, when the main German fleet, 
coming from under the forts of Wilhelms- 
haven, should strike for the conquest of the 
sea. Such were the plans, and dire the fate 
of the conquered. They were in accordance 
with the German semi-official paper, which 
cried on the day before the declaration of war : 
"We shall win — and when we do, 'Vae 
victis ! ' " With France it was to be a final 
account. Our own fate would be little better. 
It needs a righteous anger to wage war to the 



THE WORLD-WAR CONSPIRACY 37 

full, and we can feel it when we think of the 
long-drawn plot against us, and of the fate 
which defeat would bring. 

However favourable the general trend of 
events, we can hardly hope to escape some 
bad hours during this war. The Germans 
are a great and brave people, with a fine 
record in warlike history. They will not go 
down without leaving their mark deep upon 
the Allies. We must not take the opening 
successes too seriously, or allow ourselves to 
have the edge taken off our resolution by the 
idea that things will necessarily go well with 
us. On land and sea vast efforts and occa- 
sional disappointments will await us. But 
it will not be long. It is, as it seems to 
me, absolutely impossible that it should 
be long. The temper of the times will 
not brook slow measures, nor will the enor- 
mous financial strain upon Germany be 
tolerated indefinitely. How dangerous is 
prophecy, and these very words may come 
back to mock me ; but I cannot myself see 
how it can be over in less than six months, or 
how it could extend for more than twelve. 

If it should happen that the military affairs 



38 THE WORLD-WAR CONSPIRACY 

of Germany are as rotten as her diplomacy, 
then it certainly should not last long. That, 
no doubt, is too much to expect, but there are 
many degrees of incapacity which are short 
of that extreme limit. For of that, at least, 
there can be no dispute. What has come 
from all this crazy science of Real-politik and 
Welt-politik and the rest of it ? Simply that 
wherever it was possible to lose the trick 
Germany and her partner have done so. An 
alliance with Italy so loose that it was use- 
less, a Mediterranean understanding with 
Austria so vague that it only operated after 
it had become of no service to the German 
cruisers, the drawing of Servia, Montenegro, 
and, finally, of Belgium, into the field against 
them, the dealing with England in the one 
fashion which must unite our ranks and cut 
the ground from under the feet of any party 
which might cause dissension — these are the 
results of the Wilhelmstrasse combinations, 
with Potsdam embellishments. Was there 
ever so colossal a muddle ? Is there any one 
point which could have been worse handled ? 
And then as a by-product the universal dis- 
trust and anger which such policy has aroused 



THE WORLD-WAR CONSPIRACY 39 

in the neutral countries — yes, it really is a 
thing complete. 

But the German soldier may prove himself 
as good as ever. That he will be as brave as 
ever I have no doubt at all. That he will be 
as hardy as ever is less likely, as the popula- 
tion of the Fatherland has drifted largely 
from fields to factories, and as the standard 
of comfort, and even luxury, have greatly 
increased. The Westphalian artisan of 
William is very different material from the 
Brandenburg peasant of Frederick, even as 
the short-service soldier of 1914 is very 
different from the ten-year man of 1750. I 
should expect to see the German as good, but 
no better than his neighbours. But the 
whole issue of this campaign depends, from 
his point of view, upon his being better. He 
has to win against superior numbers. He 
must not only win, but win quickly. If an 
equilibrium were established, the strangula- 
tion from England must bring victory to the 
Allies. It is a great deal that the Kaiser has 
asked from his men. 

And there is his much-vaunted military 
organisation. An American friend of mine, 



40 THE WORLD-WAR CONSPIRACY 

who had means of forming an opinion, re- 
marked to me, " Yes, it is a huge and smooth- 
running machine, with delicate adjustments. 
Like all such machines, if a few cogwheels 
stuck the whole might racket itself to pieces." 
A cogwheel stuck at Liege, another may stick 
before long, and it all depends on how the 
machine can adjust itself. The lesson of his- 
tory is ominous. The Prussians of Jena and 
Auerstadt were men who had been swollen 
up by the tradition of Frederick's prowess. 
Yet in a single day their defeat was so great 
and their power of recuperation so slight that 
they were utterly dispersed, and their country 
for seven years ceased to exist as a factor in 
European politics. They have always been 
great winners. They have not always been 
great in adversity. How will they now stand 
this test if it should come their way ? 



Ill 

THE DEVIL'S DOCTRINE 

I have been interesting and exasperating 
myself, during a most untimely illness, 1 by 
working through a part of the literature of 
German Imperial Expansion. I know that 
it is only a part, and yet when I look at this 
array — Treitschke and Bernhardi, Schiemann 
andHasse, Bley, Sybel, "Gross-Deutschland" 
and " Germania Triumphans " — it represents 
a considerable body of thought. And it is the 
literature of the devil. Not one kindly senti- 
ment, not one generous expression, is to be 
found within it. It is informed with pas- 
sionate cupidity for the writer's country 
and unreasoning, indiscriminate hatred and 
jealousy towards everything outside it — above 
all, towards the British Empire. How could 
such a literature fail to bring about a world- 

1 September 10, 191 4. 
41 



42 THE DEVIL'S DOCTRINE 

coalition against the country which produced 
it ! Were there no Germans who foresaw so 
obvious a result ? The whole tendency of 
the doctrine is that Germany should, arti- 
choke fashion, dismember the world. Not 
a word is said as to the world suddenly 
turning and dismembering her. But 
was not that the only protection against 
such monstrous teaching as these books 
contain ? 

You may object that these Imperialists 
were but a group of monomaniacs and did 
not represent the nation. But the evidence 
is the other way. They represented that part 
of the nation which counts in international 
politics — they represented the Kaiser and his 
circle, Von Tirpitz and the Navy men, Krupp, 
von Bohlen and the armour-plated gang, the 
universities where such doctrines were openly 
preached, the Army, the Junkers — all the 
noisy, aggressive elements whose voice has 
sounded of late years as the voice of Germany. 
All were infected by the same virus of mad- 
ness which has compelled Europe to get them 
once for all into a strait- jacket. 

The actual policy of State was conducted 



THE DEVIL'S DOCTRINE 43 

on the very lines of these teachings, where 
the devilish doctrine that war should be for 
ever lurking in a statesman's thoughts, that 
he should be prepared to pounce upon a 
neighbour should it be in a state of weakness, 
and that no treaty or moral consideration 
should stay his hand, is repeated again and 
again as the very basis of all state-craft. 
At the time of the Agadir crisis we have the 
German Minister of Foreign Affairs openly 
admitting that he took the view of the fana- 
tical Pan-Germans. " I am as good a Pan- 
German as you," said Kiderlen-Waechter to 
the representative of the League. Each was 
as good or as bad as the other, for all were 
filled with the same heady, pernicious stuff 
which has brought Europe to chaos. 

Where, now, is that " deep, patient Ger- 
many " of which Carlyle wrote? Was ever 
a nation's soul so perverted, so fallen from 
grace ! Read this mass of bombast — learned 
bombast of professors, vulgar bombast of 
Lokal-Anzeigers and the like, but always 
bombast. Wade through the prophetic books 
with their assumption that Britain must 
perish and Germany succeed her ; consult 



44 THE DEVIL'S DOCTRINE 

the scolding articles and lectures, so narrow, 
ungenerous, and boastful in their tone, so 
utterly wanting in the deeper historical know- 
ledge or true reading of a rival's character ; 
see the insane Pan-German maps, with their 
partitions of Europe for the year 191 5 or 
thereabouts ; study the lectures of the crazy 
professors, with their absurd assumption of 
accurate knowledge and their extraordinary 
knack of getting every fact as wrong as it 
could possibly be — take all this together, and 
then say whether any nation has ever in this 
world been so foolishly and utterly misled as 
have the Germans. 

I have alluded to their knack of getting 
everything wrong. It is perfectly miraculous. 
One would not have thought it possible that 
people could be always wrong. So blinded 
have they been by hate that everything was 
distorted. Never even by accident did they 
stumble upon the truth. Let us take a list 
of their confident assertions — things so self- 
evident that they were taken for granted by 
the average journalist : 

" The British Army was worthless ; its 



THE DEVIL'S DOCTRINE 45 

presence on the Continent, even if it could 
come, was immaterial. 

" Britain herself was absolutely decadent. 

" Britain's commerce could be ruined by 
the German cruisers. 

" The United States would fall upon us if 
we were in trouble. 

" Canada and Australia were longing to 
break away from the Empire. 

" India loathed us. 

" The Boers were eager to reconquer South 
Africa. 

" The Empire was an artificial collection 
of States which must fly to pieces at the first 
shock." 

This was the nonsense which grave Berlin 
Professors of History ladled out to their 
receptive students. The sinister Treitschke, 
who is one of half a dozen men who have torn 
down Imperial Germany just as surely as 
Roon, Bismarck, and Moltke built it up, was 
the arch-priest of this cult. Like Nietzsche, 
whose moral teaching was the supplement 
to the Pan-German Material doctrine, Treit- 
schke was not, by extraction, a German at 



46 THE DEVIL'S DOCTRINE 

all. Both men were of the magnetic Slav 
stock, dreamers of dreams and seers of 
visions — evil dreams and dark visions for the 
land in which they dwelt. With their magic 
flutes they have led the whole blind, foolish, 
conceited nation down that easy, pleasant 
path which ends in this abyss. 

Nietzsche was, as his whole life proved, a 
man upon the edge of insanity, who at last 
went obviously mad. Treitschke was a man 
of great brain power, who had an idee fixe — 
a monomania about Britain. So long as he 
raved in Berlin, Englishmen took no more 
notice than they do of an anarchist howling 
in the park ; for it is the British theory that 
a man may say and think what he will so 
long as he refrains from doing. But Treit- 
schke was always dangerous. He was mag- 
netic, eloquent, enthusiastic, flashing won- 
drous visions of the future before his listeners, 
varying in beauty, but always alike in that 
they were seen across our prostrate body. 
Those who are in a position to judge, like the 
late Professor Cramb, say that his influence 
on young Germany could only be compared 
with that of Carlyle and Macaulay united in 



THE DEVIL'S DOCTRINE 47 

Great Britain. And now, after his death, his 
words have all sprung to deeds to the ruin 
of his own country and to the deep misfortune 
of ours. He used to visit England, this 
strange and sinister man, but as he was stone 
deaf his bodily presence brought him little 
nearer to us. With useless ears and jaundiced 
eyes he moved among us, returning to Berlin 
for the new Semester as ignorant as he had 
left it, to rail against us once again. He 
worked to harm us, and he has done so, but 
Lord ! what is the worst that he has done 
to us compared with the irretrievable ruin 
that he has brought to his own country ! He 
and Von Tirpitz, Count Bieberstein, Maxi- 
milian Harden and a few more, to say nothing 
of the head plotter of all — a fine Germany 
they will leave behind them ! Treitschke is 
dead, and so is Bieberstein, but a good many 
of their dupes may live to see the day when 
Indian princes ride as conquerors down Unter 
den Linden and the shattered remains of the 
braggadocio statues of the Sieges Allee, that 
vulgar monument of bastard Imperialism, will 
expiate the honoured ashes of Louvain. 
But the stupidity of it all — that is the con- 



48 THE DEVIL'S DOCTRINE 

sideration which comes in a wave to submerge 
every other aspect of the matter. For con- 
sider the situation : as lately as 1897 the 
European grouping was clear. The antag- 
onists were already ranged. Russia had 
definitely taken her side with France ; against 
them, equally definitely, were Germany and 
Austria, whilst Italy clearly was on an orbit 
by herself. War sooner or later was a cer- 
tainty. Unattached, but with a distinct 
bias to Germany on racial, religious, and other 
grounds, lay Great Britain, the richest Power 
in the world, the ruler of the seas, and a 
nation which was historically tenacious and 
unconquerable in war. Was it not clear 
that the first interest of Germany was to 
conciliate such a Power and to make sure 
that if she were not an ally she would at least 
never be an enemy ? No proposition could 
be clearer than that. And yet cast your 
minds back and remember the treatment 
and bearing of Germany towards Britain since 
that date — the floods of scorn, the libels, the 
bitter attacks, the unconcealed determination 
to do her harm. See how it has all ended, 
and how this atmosphere of hatred has put 



THE DEVIL'S DOCTRINE 49 

a driving force into Great Britain which has 
astonished ourselves. This is the end of all 
the clever Welt-Politik. Truly Quos Deus 
vult perdere — the gods must have willed it 
much, for no nation was ever madder. 

Where were the sane Germans ? Why was 
there no protest from them ? Perhaps there 
was, but we never heard of it amid the beating 
of those great Pan-German drums. Did the 
whole nation, for example, really agree in so 
harebrained a scheme as the Bagdad Rail- 
way ? Think of the insanity of such a pro- 
ject as that. Here is a railway representing 
very many millions of German capital which 
is built in the heart of Asia Minor, as far 
removed from any sort of German protection 
or effective control as if it were in the moon. 
The next step, vaguely thought out, was that 
German settlers were to be planted along the 
line of the railroad, but upon that being 
advanced the Turks, who had smiled most 
amiably at the actual railway construction, 
put down their slippers in the most emphatic 
manner. The net result, therefore, would 
seem to be that Turkey holds a hostage of a 
great many millions of German capital which, 
4 



50 THE DEVIL'S DOCTRINE 

so long as Germany behaves herself, may or 
may not return some interest ; but if Ger- 
many goes against Turkish wishes could at 
once be confiscated. Apart from Turkey, 
Russia in the Caucasus, and England in 
North- West India regard with a good deal of 
interested attention this singular and helpless 
German railway which projects out into space. 
There is one phase of their doctrines which 
has, perhaps, received less attention than it 
deserves. It will be found very fully treated 
in Professor Usher's book on Pan-Germanism, 
which, coming from an American authority 
who seems to have studied his subject very 
thoroughly, has the merit of impartiality. 
This proposition is that just as a treaty is 
only a scrap of paper, so also is a bond or 
debenture, and that just as the highest interest 
of a nation may at any moment override 
ordinary morality, the same vital urgency 
may justify anything in the nature of repu- 
diation of debt. This is not to be done on 
account of inability to pay the debt ; but 
through a deliberate, cold-blooded plot to 
weaken the creditor by robbing him of his 
property. 



THE DEVIL'S DOCTRINE 51 

Modern Germany has been largely built up 
by foreign capital. In war, if Germany is 
conquered the debt necessarily holds good. 
But if Germany wins, part of her reward 
of victory is the complete repudiation of all 
debts. Thus the glorious or inglorious prize 
of success would be, that all her vast industrial 
plant would be freed from every debenture 
and start without an encumbrance, a free 
present from the enemy. This example, 
they hope, would lead other nations to do 
the same, and so still further ruin the finances 
of England and France, which are the great 
lending nations of the earth. They frankly 
admit that such a coup would make it very 
difficult for their nation to borrow money 
again, but on the other hand, they would 
have made such an immense profit over the 
transaction that they would be able to go on 
for many years without any need of more 
capital. " To secure so stupendous a result 
as this," said the American Professor, "is 
well worth the expenditure of money for 
building a fleet. That money, so far as the 
German nation is concerned, is merely in- 
vested in an enterprise from which they 



52 THE DEVIL'S DOCTRINE 

confidently expect returns perhaps a hundred- 
fold." 

As to the morality of this transaction, the 
Professor, who has certainly no anti-German 
bias, expresses their views very plainly. It 
is the same as Frederick the Great's views 
as to the morality of treaties which have 
descended with such fatal effects upon his 
successor on the Prussian throne. Once 
admit such anti-social theories and there is 
no end to their application. Here it is in 
the domain of economics just as shameless 
as in that of politics. " Once more," says 
the Professor, " the Germans hear around 
them our cries against the morality of this 
procedure. The Germans refuse to recognise 
as moral anything which jeopardises their 
national existence." They are to be the 
judges of what these are, and if repudiation 
of debt is considered to be one of them, then 
all debt may be repudiated. They will not 
put their views into practice this time be- 
cause they will not be the victors, but when 
the reconstruction of Germany begins and she 
comes once again as a chastened borrower 
into the market-place of the world, it would 



THE DEVIL'S DOCTRINE 53 

be well to have some assurance as to how- 
far she retains these views upon commercial 
morality. 

But I have visions of a really chastened 
Germany, of a Germany which has sloughed 
all this wicked nonsense, which has found her 
better self again, and which is once more that 
" deep, patient Germany " with which I 
began this essay. She never can be now 
what she could so easily have been. She 
could have continued indefinitely to extend 
from Poland to the Vosges, one vast com- 
munity, honoured by all for industry and 
for learning, with a huge commerce, a happy, 
peaceful, prosperous population, and a 
Colonial system which, if smaller than that 
of nations which were centuries older in the 
field, would at least be remarkable for so short 
a time. None of these things would the world 
have grudged her, and in the future as in the 
past she would have found in the British 
Dominions and in Great Britain herself an 
entry for her products as free as if she were 
herself part of the Empire. 

All this must be changed for the worse, 
and it is just that she should suffer for her 



54 THE DEVIL'S DOCTRINE 

sins. The work of sixty years will be de- 
stroyed. But will not the spiritual Germany 
be the stronger and better ? We cannot say. 
We can but hope and wait and wonder. 
What is sure is that the real Germany, of 
whom Carlyle spoke, can never be destroyed. 
Nor would we desire it. Our wrath is not 
against Germany, but against that Krupp- 
Kaiser- Junker combination which has brought 
her to such a deadly pass. 



IV 

THE GREAT GERMAN PLOT 

It will be a fascinating task for the historian 
of the immediate future to work out the 
various strands of evidence which seem to be 
independent and yet when followed up con- 
verge upon the central purpose of a pre- 
arranged war for the late summer of 1914 — 
a war in which Germany should be the prime 
mover and instigator and Austria the dupe 
and catspaw. 

Of course, there are some great facts patent 
to all the world. There is the sudden rapid 
acceleration of German preparations for the 
last two years, the great increase of the army 
with the colours, and the special emergency 
tax which was to bring in fifty millions of 
money. Looking back, we can see very 
clearly that these things were the run before 
the jump. Germany at the moment of de- 
claring war had accumulated by processes 

55 



56 THE GREAT GERMAN PLOT 

extending over years all the money which 
by borrowing or taxation she could raise, 
and she cannot really expect the rest of the 
world to believe that it was a mere coinci- 
dence that a crisis came along at that par- 
ticular and favourable moment. All the 
evidence tends to show that the long-planned 
outbreak — the " letting-go " as it was called 
in Germany — was carefully prepared for that 
particular date and that the Bosnian assas- 
sinations had nothing whatever to do with 
the matter. A pretext could very easily be 
found, as Bernhardi remarks, and if the 
Crown Prince of Austria were still alive and 
well we should none the less have found our- 
selves at death-grips with the Kaiser over 
the Belgian infraction. 

There are a number of small indications 
which will have to be investigated and collated 
by the inquiring chronicler. There is, for 
example, the reception of guns for a merchant 
cruiser in a South American port which must 
have been sent off not later than July 10, 
three weeks before the crisis developed. 
There is the document of this same date, 
July 10, found upon a German officer, which 



THE GREAT GERMAN PLOT 57 

is said to have censured him for not having 
answered some mobilisation form on that day. 
Then there is the abnormal quantity of grain 
ordered in Canada and America in May ; 
and finally there is the receipt of mobilisation 
warnings by Austrian reservists in South 
Africa, advising them that they should 
return at a date which must place their issue 
from Vienna in the first week of July. All 
these small incidents show the absurdity of 
the German contention that at a moment of 
profound peace some sort of surprise was 
sprung upon them. There was, indeed, a 
surprise intended, but they were to be the 
surprisers — though, indeed, I think their 
machinations were too clumsy to succeed. 
They had retained the immorality but lost 
the ability for that sudden tiger pounce which 
Frederick, in a moment of profound peace, 
made upon Silesia. 

I fancy that every Chancellery in Europe 
suspected that something was in the wind. 
It was surely not a mere coincidence that the 
grand Fleet lay ready for action at Spithead 
and that the First Army Corps was practising 
some very useful mobilisation exercises at 



58 THE GREAT GERMAN PLOT 

Aldershot. After all, our British Adminis- 
tration is not so simple-minded as it some- 
times seems. Indeed, that very simplicity 
may at times be its most deadly mask. At 
one time of my life I was much bruised in 
spirit over the ease with which foreigners 
were shown over our arsenals and yards. 
Happening to meet the head of the Naval 
Intelligence Department, I confided my 
trouble to him. It was at a public banquet 
where conversation was restricted, but he 
turned his head towards me, and his left eye- 
lid flickered for an instant. Since then I have 
never needed any reassurance upon the subject. 
But there is another matter which will 
insist on coming back into one's thoughts 
when one reviews the events which preceded 
the war. I was in Canada in June, and the 
country was much disturbed by the fact that 
a shipload of Hindus had arrived at Van- 
couver, and had endeavoured to land in the 
face of the anti-Asiatic immigration laws. It 
struck me at the time as a most extraordinary 
incident, for these Indians were not the usual 
Bengalee pedlars, but were Sikhs of a proud 
and martial race. What could be their 



THE GREAT GERMAN PLOT 59 

object in endeavouring to land in Canada, 
when the climate of that country would make 
it impossible for them to settle in it ? It was 
a most unnatural incident, and yet a most 
painful one, for the British Government was 
placed in the terrible dilemma of either sup- 
porting Canada against India or India against 
Canada. Could anything be better calcu- 
lated to start an agitation in one country or 
the other ? The thing was inexplicable at 
the time, but now one would wish to know 
who paid for that ship and engineered the 
whole undertaking. I believe it was one 
more move on Germany's world-wide board. 1 
In connection with the date at which the 
long-expected German war was to break out, 
it is of interest now to remember some of the 
conversations to which I listened three years 
ago, when I was a competitor in the Anglo- 
German motor competition, called the Prince 
Henry Tour. It was a very singular experi- 
ence, and was itself not without some 
political meaning, since it could hardly have 
been chance that a German gunboat should 

1 Two months later, according to The Times, official 
evidence of this was actually forthcoming. — A. C. D. 



60 THE GREAT GERMAN PLOT 

appear at Agadir at the very instant when the 
head of the German Navy was making him- 
self agreeable (and he can be exceedingly 
agreeable) to a number of Britons, and a 
genial international atmosphere was being 
created by the nature of the contest, which 
sent the whole fleet of seventy or eighty cars 
on a tour of hospitality through both coun- 
tries. I refuse to believe that it was chance, 
and it was a remarkable example of the 
detail to which the Germans can descend. 
By the rules of the competition a German 
officer had to be present in each British car 
and a British officer in each German one 
during the whole three weeks, so as to check 
the marks of the driver. It was certainly an 
interesting situation, since every car had its 
foreign body within it, which had to be 
assimilated somehow with the alternative 
of constant discomfort. Personally we were 
fortunate in having a Rittmeister of Breslau 
Cuirassiers, with whom we were able to form 
quite a friendship. Good luck to you, Count 
Carmer, and bad luck to your regiment ! 
To you also, little Captain Tiirck, Fregatten- 
capitdn am dienst, the best of luck, and ill 



THE GREAT GERMAN PLOT 61 

betide your cruiser ! We found pleasant 
friends among the Germans, though all were 
not equally fortunate, and I do not think 
that the net result helped much towards an 
international entente. 

However, the point of my reminiscence is 
that on this tour I, being at that time a 
champion of Anglo-German friendship, heard 
continual discussions, chiefly on the side of 
British officers, several of whom were experts 
on German matters, as to when the impending 
war would be forced upon us. The date 
given was always 1914 or 1915. When I 
asked why this particular year, the answer 
was that the German preparations would be 
ready by then, and especially the widening 
of the Kiel Canal, by which the newer and 
larger battleships would be able to pass from 
the Baltic to the North Sea. It says some- 
thing for the foresight of these officers that 
this widening was actually finished on June 24 
of this year, and within six weeks the whole 
of Europe was at war. I am bound to admit 
that they saw deeper into the future than I 
did, and formed a truer estimate of our real 
relations with our fellow- voyagers. " Surely 



62 THE GREAT GERMAN PLOT 

you feel more friendly to them now," said I 
at the end to one distinguished officer. " All 
I want with them now is to fight them," said 
he. We have all been forced to come round 
to his point of view. 

Yes, it was a deep, deep plot, a plot 
against the liberties of Europe, extending over 
several years, planned out to the smallest 
detail in the days of peace, developed by 
hordes of spies, prepared for by every con- 
ceivable military, naval, and financial pre- 
caution, and finally sprung upon us on a 
pretext which was no more the real cause of 
war than any other excuse would have been 
which would serve their turn by having 
some superficial plausibility. The real cause 
of war was a universal national insanity 
infecting the whole German race, but derived 
originally from a Prussian caste who inocu- 
lated the others with their megalomania. 

This insanity was based upon the universal 
supposition that the Germans were the 
Lord's chosen people, that in the words of 
Buy, they were " the most cultured people, 
the best settlers, the best warriors " — the best 
everything. Having got that idea thoroughly 



THE GREAT GERMAN PLOT 63 

infused into their very blood, the next step 
was clear. If they were infinitely the best 
people living amidst such tribes as " the 
barbarous Russians, the fickle French, the 
beastly Servians and Belgians," to quote one 
of their recent papers, then why should they 
not have all the best things in the world ? 
If they were really the most powerful, who 
could gainsay them ? They need not do it 
all at once, but two great national efforts 
would give them the whole of unredeemed 
Germany, both shores of the Rhine down to 
the sea, the German cantons of Switzerland, 
and, in conjunction with Austria, the long 
road that leads to Salonica. All local causes 
and smaller details sink into nothing com- 
pared with this huge national ambition which 
was the real driving force at the back of this 
formidable project. 

And it was a very formidable project. If 
such things could be settled by mere figures 
and time-tables without any reference to the 
spirit and soul of the nations, it might very 
well have succeeded. I think that we are 
not indulging too far in national complacency 
if we say that without the British army — that 



64 THE GREAT GERMAN PLOT 

negligible factor — it would for the time at 
least have succeeded. Had the Germans 
accomplished their purpose of getting round 
the left wing of the French, it is difficult to 
see how a debacle could have been avoided, 
and it was our little army which stood in the 
pass and held it until that danger was past. 
It is certain now that the huge sweep of the 
German right had never been allowed for, 
that the French troops in that quarter were 
second-line troops, and that it was our great 
honour and good fortune to have dammed 
that raging torrent and stopped the rush which 
must have swept everything before it until 
it went roaring into Paris. And yet how 
many things might have prevented our 
presence at the right place at the right time, 
and how near we were to a glorious annihila- 
tion upon that dreadful day when the artillery 
of five German army corps — eight hundred and 
thirty guns in all — were concentrated upon 
Smith-Dorrien's exhausted men. The success 
or failure of the great conspiracy hung upon 
the over-matched British covering batteries 
upon that one critical afternoon. It was the 
turning-point of the history of the world. 



THE 
" CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY " 

Early last year, in the course of some com- 
ments which I made upon the slighting 
remarks about our Army by General von 
Bernhardi, I observed, "It may be noted 
that General von Bernhardi has a poor opinion 
of our troops. This need not trouble us. We 
are what we are, and words will not alter it. 
From very early days our soldiers have left 
their mark upon Continental warfare, and 
we have no reason to think that we have 
declined from the manhood of our fore- 
fathers." Since then he has returned to the 
attack. With that curious power of coming 
after deep study to the absolutely diametri- 
cally wrong conclusion which the German 
expert, political or military, appears to pos- 
sess, he says in his War of To-day, " The 

5 6 * 



66 " CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY " 

English Army, trained more for purposes of 
show than for modern war," adding in 
the same sentence a sneer at our " inferior 
Colonial levies." He will have an oppor- 
tunity of reconsidering his views presently 
upon the fighting value of our over-sea 
troops, and surely so far as our own are con- 
cerned he must already be making some 
interesting notes for his next edition, or rather 
for the learned volume upon Germany and 
the Last War which will no doubt come from 
his pen. He is a man to whom we might 
well raise a statue, for I am convinced that 
his cynical confession of German policy has 
been worth at least an army corps to this 
country. We may address to him John 
Davidson's lines to his enemy — 

"Unwilling friend, let not your spite abate, 
Spur us with scorn, and strengthen us with hate." 

There is another German gentleman who 
must be thinking rather furiously. He is a 
certain Colonel Gadke, who appeared officially 
at Aldershot some years ago, was hospit- 
ably entreated, being shown all that he 
desired to see, and on his return to Berlin 



" CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY " 67 

published a most depreciatory description 
of our forces. He found no good thing in 
them. I have some recollection that General 
French alluded in a public speech to this 
critic's remarks, and expressed a modest 
hope that he and his men would some day 
have the opportunity of showing how far 
they were deserved. Well, he has had his 
opportunity, and Colonel Gadke, like so many 
other Germans, seems to have made a mis- 
calculation. 

An army which has preserved the absurd 
Paradeschritt, an exercise which is painful 
to the bystander, as he feels that it is making 
fools of brave men, must have a tendency 
to throw back to earlier types. These Ger- 
mans have been trained in peace and upon the 
theory of books. In all that vast host there 
is hardly a man who has previously stood at 
the wrong end of a loaded gun. They live on 
traditions of close formations, vast cavalry 
charges, and other things which will not fit 
into modern warfare. Braver men do not 
exist, but it is the bravery of men who have 
been taught to lean upon each other, and not 
the cold, self-contained, resourceful bravery 



68 " CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY " 

of the man who has learned to fight for his 
own hand. The British have had the teach- 
ings of two recent campaigns fought with 
modern weapons — that of the Tirah and of 
South Africa. Now that the reserves have 
joined the colours there are few regiments 
which have not a fair sprinkling of veterans 
from these wars in their ranks. The Pathan 
and the Boer have been their instructors in 
something more practical than those Imperial 
Grand Manoeuvres where the all-highest played 
with his puppets in such a fashion that one 
of his generals remarked that the chief 
practical difficulty of a campaign so con- 
ducted would be the disposal of the dead. 

Boers and Pathans have been hard masters, 
and have given many a slap to their admir- 
ing pupils, but the lesson has been learned. 
It was not show troops, General, who, with 
two corps, held five of your best day after 
day from Mons to Compiegne. It is no re- 
proach to your valour : but you were up 
against men who were equally brave and 
knew a great deal more of the game. This 
must begin to break upon you, and will 
surely grow clearer as the days go by. We 



" CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY " 69 

shall often in the future take the knock as 
well as give it, but you will not say that we 
have a show army if you live to chronicle 
this war, nor will your Imperial master be 
proud of the adjective which he has de- 
meaned himself in using before his troops 
had learned their lesson. 

The fact is that the German army, with 
all its great traditions, has been petrifying 
for many years back. They never learned 
the lesson of South Africa. It was not for 
want of having it expounded to them, for 
their military attache — " 'im with the spatch- 
cock on 'is 'elmet," as I heard him described 
by a British orderly — missed nothing of what 
occurred, as is evident from their official his- 
tory of the war. And yet they missed it, and 
with it all those ideas of individual efficiency 
and elastic independent formations, which 
are the essence of modern soldiering. Their 
own more liberal thinkers were aware of it. 
Here are the words which were put into the 
mouth of Giintz, the representative of the 
younger school, in Beyerlein's famous novel : 

"The organisation of the German army 
rested upon foundations which had been laid 



70 " CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY " 

a hundred years ago. Since the great war 
they had never seriously been put to the 
proof, and during the last three decades they 
had only been altered in the most trifling 
details. In three long decades ! And in 
one of those decades the world at large had 
advanced as much as in the previous century. 

" Instead of turning this highly developed 
intelligence to good account, they bound it 
hand and foot on the rack of an everlasting 
drill which could not have been more soul- 
lessly mechanical in the days of Frederick. 
It held them together as an iron hoop holds 
together a cask the dry staves of which would 
fall asunder at the first kick." 

Lord Roberts has said that if ten points 
represent the complete soldier, eight should 
stand for his efficiency as a shot. The Ger- 
man maxim has rather been that eight should 
stand for his efficiency as a drilled marionette. 
It has been reckoned that about 200 books 
a year appear in Germany upon military 
affairs, against about 20 in Britain. And 
yet after all this expert debate the essential 
point of all seems to have been missed — that 
in the end everything depends upon the man 



" CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY " 71 

behind the gun, upon his hitting his opponent 
and upon his taking cover so as to avoid being 
hit himself. 

After all the efforts of the General Staff 
the result when shown upon the field of 
battle has filled our men with a mixture of 
admiration and contempt — contempt for the 
absurd tactics, admiration for the poor devils 
who struggle on in spite of them. Listen to 
the voices of the men who are the real ex- 
perts. Says a Lincolnshire sergeant, " They 
were in solid square blocks, and we couldn't 
help hitting them." Says Private Tait (2nd 
Essex), " Their rifle shooting is rotten. I 
don't believe they could hit a haystack at 
100 yards." "They are rotten shots with 
their rifles," says an Oldham private. " They 
advance in close column, and you simply can't 
help hitting them," writes a Gordon High- 
lander. " You would have thought it was 
a big crowd streaming out from a Cup- tie," 
says Private Whitaker of the Guards. " It 
was like a farmer's machine cutting grass," 
so it seemed to Private Hawkins of the Cold- 
streams. " No damned good as riflemen," 
says a Connemara boy. " You couldn't help 



72 " CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY " 

hitting them. As to their rifle fire, it was 
useless." " They shoot from the hip, and 
don't seem to aim at anything in particular." 

These are the opinions of the practical 
men upon the field of battle. Surely a poor 
result from the 200 volumes a year, and all 
the weighty labours of the General Staff ! 
" Artillery nearly as good as our own, rifle 
fire beneath contempt," that is the verdict. 
How will the well-taught Paradeschritt avail 
them when it comes to a stricken field ? 

But let it not seem as if this were meant 
for disparagement. We should be sinking 
to the Kaiser's level if we answered his " con- 
temptible little army " by pretending that 
his own troops are anything but a very for- 
midable and big army. They are formidable 
in numbers, formidable, too, in their patriotic 
devotion, in their native courage, and in 
the possession of such material, such great 
cannon, aircraft, machine guns, and armoured 
cars, as none of the Allies can match. They 
have every advantage which a nation would 
be expected to have when it has known that 
war was a certainty, while others have only 
treated it as a possibility. There is a minute- 



" CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY " 73 

ness and earnestness of preparation which 
are only possible for an assured event. But 
the fact remains, and it will only be brought 
out more clearly by the Emperor's un- 
chivalrous phrase, that in every arm the 
British have already shown themselves to 
be the better troops. Had he the Froissart 
spirit within him he would rather have said : 
" You have to-day a task which is worthy of 
you. You are faced by an army which has 
a high repute and a great history. There is 
real glory to be won to-day." Had he said 
this, then, win or lose, he would not have 
needed to be ashamed of his own words — 
the words of an ungenerous spirit. 

It is a very strange thing how German 
critics have taken for granted that the 
British Army had deteriorated, while the 
opinion of all those who were in close touch 
with it was that it was never so good. Even 
some of the French experts made the same 
mistake, and General Bonnat counselled his 
countrymen not to rely upon it, since " it 
would take refuge amid its islands at the first 
reverse." One would think that the causes 
which make for its predominance were obvious. 



74 " CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY " 

Apart from any question of national spirit 
or energy, there is the all-important fact that 
the men are there of their own free will, an 
advantage which I trust that we shall never 
be compelled to surrender. Again, the men 
are of longer service in every arm, and they 
have far more opportunities of actual fight- 
ing than come to any other force. Finally, 
they are divided into regiments, with cen- 
turies of military glory streaming from their 
banners, which carry on a mighty tradition. 
The very words the Guards, the Rifles, the 
Connaught Rangers, the Buffs, the Scots 
Greys, the Gordons, sound like bugle-calls. 
How could an army be anything but dan- 
gerous which had such units in its line of 
battle ? 

And yet there remains the fact that both 
enemies and friends are surprised at our 
efficiency. This is no new phenomenon. 
Again and again in the course of history the 
British Armies have had to win once more 
the reputation which had been forgotten. 
Continentals have always begun by refusing 
to take them seriously. Napoleon, who had 
never met them in battle, imagined that their 



" CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY " 75 

unbroken success was due to some weakness 
in his marshals rather than to any excellence 
of the troops. " At last I have them, these 
English," he exclaimed, at he gazed at the 
thin red line at Waterloo. " At last they 
have me, these English," may have been his 
thought that evening as he spurred his horse 
out of the debacle. Foy warned him of the 
truth. " The British infantry is the devil," 
said he. " You think so because you were 
beaten by them," cried Napoleon. Like von 
Kluck or von Kluck's master, he had some- 
thing to learn. 

Why this continual depreciation ? It may 
be that the world pays so much attention to 
our excellent right arm that it cannot give us 
credit for having a very serviceable left as 
well. Or it may be that they take seriously 
those jeremiads over our decay which are 
characteristic of our people, and very especi- 
ally of many of our military thinkers. I have 
never been able to understand why they 
should be of so pessimistic a turn of mind, 
unless it be a sort of exaltation of that grum- 
bling which has always been the privilege of 
the old soldier. Croker narrates how he met 



76 " CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY " 

Wellington in his latter years, and how the 
Iron Duke told him that he was glad that he 
was so old, as he would not live to see the 
dreadful military misfortunes which were 
about to come to his country. Looking back 
we can see no reasons for such pessimism as 
this. Above all, the old soldier can never 
make any allowance for the latent powers 
which lie in civilian patriotism and valour. 
Only a year ago I had a long conversation 
with a well-known British General, in which 
he asserted with great warmth that in case of 
an Anglo-German war with France involved 
the British public would never allow a trained 
soldier to leave these islands. He is at the 
front himself and doing such good work that 
he has little time for reminiscence, but when 
he has he must admit that he underrated 
the nerve of his countrymen. 

And yet under the pessimism of such men 
as he there is a curious contradictory assur- 
ance that there are no troops like our own. 
The late Lord Goschen used to tell a story of 
a letter that he had from a captain in the 
Navy at the time when he was First Lord. 
This captain's ship was tying alongside a 



" CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY " yj 

foreign cruiser in some port, and he compared 
in his report the powers of the two vessels. 
Lord Goschen said that his heart sank as he 
read the long catalogue of points in which 
the British ship was inferior — guns, armour, 
speed — until he came to the postscript, which 
was : "I think I could take her in twenty- 
minutes. " 

With all the grumbling of our old soldiers 
there is always some reservation of the sort 
at the end of it. Of course those who are 
familiar with our ways of getting things done 
would understand that a good deal of the 
croaking is a means of getting our little army 
increased, or at least preventing its being 
diminished. But whatever the cause, the 
result has been the impression abroad of a 
" contemptible little army." Whatever sur- 
prise in the shape of 17-inch howitzers or 
900-foot Zeppelins the Kaiser may have for 
us, it is a safe prophecy that it will be a small 
matter compared to that which Sir John 
French and his men will be to him. 

But above all I look forward to the de- 
velopment of our mounted riflemen. This I 
say in no disparagement of our cavalry, who 



78 " CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY " 

have done so magnificently. But the mounted 
rifleman is a peculiarly British product — 
British and American — with a fresh edge 
upon it from South Africa. I am most 
curious to see what a division of these fellows 
will make of the Uhlans. It is good to see 
that already the old banners are in the wind 
— Lovat's Horse, Scottish Horse, King Ed- 
ward's Horse, and the rest. All that cavalry 
can do will surely be done by our cavalry. 
But I have always held, and I still very 
strongly hold, that the mounted rifleman 
has it in him to alter our whole conception 
of warfare, as the mounted archer did in his 
day ; and now in this very war will be his 
first great chance upon a large scale. Ten 
thousand well-mounted, well-trained rifle- 
men, young officers to lead them, all broad 
Germany with its towns, its railways, and its 
magazines before them — there lies one more 
surprise for the doctrinaires of Berlin. 



VI 

A POLICY OF MURDER 

When one writes with a hot heart upon events 
which are still recent one is apt to lose one's 
sense of proportion. At every step one 
should check oneself by the reflection as to 
how this may appear ten years hence, and 
how far events which seem shocking and 
abnormal may prove themselves to be a 
necessary accompaniment of every condition 
of war. But a time has now come when in 
cold blood, with every possible restraint, one 
is justified in saying that since the most bar- 
barous campaigns of Alva in the Lowlands, 
or the excesses of the Thirty Years' War, 
there has been no such deliberate policy of 
murder as has been adopted in this struggle 
by the German forces. This is the more 
terrible since these forces are not, like those 
of Alva, Parma, or Tilly, bands of turbulent 

79 



80 A POLICY OF MURDER 

and mercenary soldiers, but they are the 
nation itself, and their deeds are condoned or 
even applauded by the entire national Press. 
It is not on the chiefs of the army that the 
whole guilt of this terrible crime must rest, 
but it is upon the whole German nation, 
which for generations to come must stand 
condemned before the civilised world for this 
reversion to those barbarous practices from 
which Christianity, civilisation, and chivalry 
had gradually rescued the human race. They 
may, and do, plead the excuse that they are 
" earnest " in war, but all nations are earnest 
in war, which is the most desperately earnest 
thing of which we have any knowledge. How 
earnest we are will be shown when the ques- 
tion of endurance begins to tell. But no 
earnestness can condone the crime of the 
nation which deliberately breaks those laws 
which have been endorsed by the common 
consent of humanity. 

War may have a beautiful as well as a 
terrible side, and be full of touches of human 
sympathy and restraint which mitigate its 
unavoidable horror. Such have been the 
characteristics always of the secular wars 



A POLICY OF MURDER 81 

between the British and the French. From 
the old glittering days of knighthood, with 
their high and gallant courtesy, through 
the eighteenth-century campaigns where the 
debonair guards of France and England ex- 
changed salutations before their volleys, down 
to the last great Napoleonic struggle, the 
tradition of chivalry has always survived. 
We read how in the Peninsula the pickets 
of the two armies, each of them as earnest 
as any Germans, would exchange courtesies, 
how they would shout warnings to each 
other to fall back when an advance in force 
was taking place, and how, to prevent the 
destruction of an ancient bridge, the British 
promised not to use it on condition that the 
French would forgo its destruction — an agree- 
ment faithfully kept upon either side. Could 
one imagine Germans making war in such a 
spirit as this ? Think of that old French 
bridge, and then think of the University of 
Louvain and the Cathedral of Rheims. What 
a gap between them — the gap that separates 
civilisation from the savage ! 

Let us take a few of the points which, 
when focussed together, show how the Ger- 
6 



82 A POLICY OF MURDER 

mans have degraded warfare — a degradation 
which affects not only the Allies at present, 
but the whole future of the world, since if 
such examples were followed the entire human 
race would, each in turn, become the sufferers. 
Take the very first incident of the war, the 
mine-laying by the Konigin Luise. Here 
was a vessel, which was obviously made ready 
with freshly charged mines some time before 
there was any question of a general European 
war, which was sent forth in time of peace, 
and which, on receipt of a wireless message, 
began to spawn its hellish cargo across the 
North Sea at points 50 miles from land in 
the track of all neutral merchant shipping. 
There was the keynote of German tactics 
struck at the first possible instant. So pro- 
miscuous was the effect that it was a mere 
chance which prevented the vessel which 
bore the German Ambassador from being 
destroyed by a German mine. From first to 
last some hundreds of people have lost their 
lives on this tract of sea, some of them harm- 
less British trawlers, but the greater number 
sailors of Danish and Dutch vessels pursuing 
their commerce as they had every right to 



A POLICY OF MURDER 83 

do. It was the first move in a consistent 
policy of murder. 

Leaving the sea, let us turn to the air. 
Can any possible term save a policy of murder 
be applied to the use of aircraft by the 
Germans ? It has always been a principle of 
warfare that unfortified towns should not be 
bombarded. So closely has it been followed 
by the British that one of our aviators, flying 
over Cologne in search of a Zeppelin shed, 
refrained from dropping a bomb in an un- 
certain light, even though Cologne is a for- 
tress, lest the innocent should suffer. What 
is to be said, then, for the continual use of 
bombs by the Germans, which have usually 
been wasted in the destruction of cats or 
dogs, but which have occasionally torn to 
pieces some woman or child ? If bombs 
were dropped on the forts of Paris as part 
of a scheme for reducing the place, then 
nothing could be said in objection, but how 
are we to describe the action of men who fly 
over a crowded city dropping bombs promis- 
cuously which can have no military effect 
whatever, and are entirely aimed at the de- 
struction of innocent civilians ? These men 



84 A POLICY OF MURDER 

have been obliging enough to drop their 
cards as well as their bombs on several 
occasions. I see no reason why these should 
not be used in evidence against them, or 
why they should not be hanged as murderers 
when they fall into the hands of the Allies. 
The policy is idiotic from a military point 
of view ; one could conceive nothing which 
would stimulate and harden national resis- 
tance more surely than such petty irritations. 
But it is a murderous innovation in the laws 
of war, and unless it is sternly repressed it 
will establish a most sinister precedent for 
the future. 

As to the treatment of Belgium, what has 
it been but murder, murder all the way ? 
From the first days at Vise, when it was 
officially stated that an example of " fright- 
fulness " was desired, until the present mo- 
ment, when the terrified population has 
rushed from the country and thrown itself 
upon the charity and protection of its neigh- 
bours, there has been no break in the record. 
Compare the story with that of the occupa- 
tion of the South of France by Wellington 
in 1813, when no one was injured, nothing 



A POLICY OF MURDER 85 

was taken without full payment, and the 
villagers fraternised with the troops. What 
a relapse of civilisation is here ! From Vise 
to Louvain, Louvain to Aerschott, Aerschott 
to Malines and Termonde, the policy of 
murder never fails. 

It is said that more civilians than soldiers 
have fallen in Belgium. Peruse the horrible 
accounts taken by the Belgian Commission, 
who took evidence in the most careful and 
conscientious fashion. Study the accounts of 
that dreadful night in Louvain which can 
only be equalled by the Spanish Fury of 
Antwerp. Read the account of the wife of 
the burgomaster of Aerschott, with its heart- 
rending description of how her lame son, 
aged sixteen, was kicked along to his death 
by an aide-de-camp. It is all so vile, so 
brutally murderous that one can hardly 
realise that one is reading the incidents of a 
modern campaign conducted by one of the 
leading nations in Europe. 

Do you imagine that the thing has been 
exaggerated ? Far from it — the volume of 
crime has not yet been appreciated. Have 
not many Germans unwittingly testified to 



86 A POLICY OF MURDER 

what they have seen and done ? Only last 
week we had the journal of one of them, an 
officer whose service had been almost entirely 
in France and removed from the crime centres 
of Belgium. Yet were ever such entries in 
the diary of a civilised soldier ? " Our men 
behaved like regular Vandals." " We shot 
the whole lot " (these were villagers). " They 
were drawn up in three ranks. The same shot 
did for three at a time." (t In the evening 
we set fire to the village. The priest and 
some of the inhabitants were shot." " The 
villages all round were burning." " The 
villages were burned and the inhabitants 
shot." " At Leppe apparently two hundred 
men were shot. There must have been 
some innocent men among them." " In 
future we shall have to hold an inquiry 
into their guilt instead of merely shooting 
them." " The Vandals themselves could not 
have done more damage. The place is a 
disgrace to our army." So the journal runs 
on with its tale of infamy. It is an infamy 
so shameless that even in the German record 
the story is perpetuated of how a French lad 
was murdered because he refused to answer 



A POLICY OF MURDER 87 

certain questions. To such a depth of 
degradation has Prussia brought the standard 
of warfare. 

And now, as the appetite for blood grows 
ever stronger — and nothing waxes more fast 
— we have stories of the treatment of prisoners. 
Here is a point where our attention should 
be most concentrated and our action most 
prompt. It is the just duty which we owe 
to our own brave soldiers. At present the 
instances are isolated, and we will hope that 
they do not represent any general condition. 
But the stories come from sure sources. There 
is the account of the brutality which culmin- 
ated in the death of the gallant motor-cyclist 
Pearson, the son of Lord Cowdray. There 
is the horrible story in a responsible Dutch 
paper, told by an eye-witness, of the torture 
of three British wounded prisoners in Landen 
Station on October 9. 

The story carries conviction by its detail. 
Finally, there are the disquieting remarks of 
German soldiers, repeated by this same 
witness, as to the British prisoners whom they 
had shot. The whole lesson of history is 
that when troops are allowed to start murder 



88 A POLICY OF MURDER 

one can never say how or when it will stop. 
It may no longer be part of a deliberate, 
calculated policy of murder by the German 
Government. But it has undoubtedly been 
so in the past, and we cannot say when it 
will end. Such incidents will, I fear, make 
peace an impossibility in our generation, for 
whatever statesmen may write upon paper 
can never affect the deep and bitter resent- 
ment which a war so conducted must leave 
behind it. 

Other German characteristics we can ignore. 
The consistent, systematic lying of the German 
Press, or the grotesque blasphemies of the 
Kaiser, can be met by us with contemptuous 
tolerance. After all, what is is, and neither 
falsehood nor bombast will alter it. But 
this policy of murder deeply affects not 
only ourselves but the whole framework of 
civilisation so slowly and painfully built 
upwards by the human race. 



VII 

MADNESS 

We have all, I suppose, read and marvelled 
at the wonderful German " song of hate." 
This has been so much admired over the water 
that Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria (who had 
just stated his bitter hatred of us in a prose 
army order) distributed copies of the verses 
to his Bavarians as a stimulant in their long, 
unsuccessful tussle with our troops at Ypres. 
In case the reader has forgotten its flavour, 
I append a typical verse : 

" We will never forgo our hate. 
We have all but a single hate. 
We love as one, we hate as one, 
We have one foe and one alone — 
England." 

This sort of thing is, it must be admitted, 
very painful and odious. It fills us with a 
mixture of pity and disgust, and we feel as 
if, instead of a man, we were really fighting 



90 MADNESS 

with a furious, screaming woman. Germany 
used to be a very great nation, mentally and 
morally as well as in material ways, and 
many of us, even while we fight her, are 
honestly pained by the depths of degradation 
into which she has fallen. This shrill scream 
of hate and constant frenzied ranting against 
Great Britain may reach its highest note in 
this poem, but we know that it pervades the 
whole Press and every class of national 
thought. It is deliberately fed by lying 
journals, which publish bogus letters de- 
scribing the imaginary sufferings of German 
prisoners, and also by the Government it- 
self, which upon receiving a Socialist report 
partly favourable to Britain, excised those 
passages and circulated the rest as a complete 
document, so as to give the idea that it was 
wholly condemnatory. Wherever we touch 
Germany in its present phase, whether it be 
the Overlord himself with his megalomaniac 
messages, the princes with their looting of 
chateaux, the Foreign Office with its trick 
of stealing American passports for the use 
of German spies, the army with its absolute 
brutality, the navy with its tactics of mine- 



MADNESS 91 

laying in neutral waters, the Press with its 
grotesque concoctions, the artists with their 
pictures, which are so base that the decent 
Germans have themselves at last rebelled 
against them, or the business men with their 
assertion that there is less economic distur- 
bance in Germany than in Great Britain — 
wherever, I say, you touch them you come 
always upon what is odious and deceitful. 
A long century will have passed before 
Germany can wash her hands clean from 
murder, or purge from her spirit the shadow 
of this evil time. 

If the words of one humble individual 
could reach across the seas, there are two 
things upon which I should wish to speak 
earnestly to a German : the one, our own 
character, the other, the future which he is 
deliberately preparing for the Fatherland 
which he loves. Our papers do get over 
there, even as theirs come over here, so one 
may hope it is not impossible that some 
German may give a thought to what I say, if 
he is not so bemused by the atmosphere of lies 
in which his Press has enveloped him that 
he cannot recognise cold truth when he sees it. 



92 MADNESS 

First as to ourselves : we have never been 
a nation who fought with hatred. It is our 
ideal to fight in a sporting spirit. It is not 
that we are less in earnest, but it is that 
the sporting spirit itself is a thing very 
largely evolved by us and is a natural 
expression of our character. We fight as 
hard as we can, and we like and admire those 
who fight hard against us so long as they 
keep within the rules of the game. Let me 
take an obvious example. One German has 
done us more harm than any other in this 
war. He is Captain von M tiller of the Emden, 
whose depredations represent the cost of 
a battleship. Yet an honest sigh of relief 
went up from us all when we learned that 
he had not perished with his ship, and if he 
walked down Fleet Street to-day he would 
be cheered by the crowd from end to end. 
Why ? Because almost alone among Ger- 
mans he has played the game as it should be 
played. It is true that everything that he 
did was illegal. He had no right to burn 
uncondemned prizes, and a purist could 
claim that he was a pirate. But we recog- 
nised the practical difficulties of his position ; 



MADNESS 93 

we felt that under the circumstances he had 
acted like a gentleman, and we freely forgave 
him any harm that he had done us. With 
this example before you, my German reader, 
you cannot say that it is national hatred 
when we denounce your murderers and 
brigands in Belgium. If they, too, had acted 
as gentlemen, we should have felt towards 
them as to von Miiller. 

If you look back in British history, you 
will find that this absence of hatred has 
always been characteristic of us. When Soult 
came to London after the Napoleonic wars, 
he was cheered through the City. After the 
Boer War, Botha, de Wet, and Delarey had 
a magnificent reception. We did not know 
that one of them was destined to prove a 
despicable and perjured traitor. They had 
been good fighters, the fight was done, we 
had shaken hands — and we cheered them. 
All British prize-fights ended with the shaking 
of hands. Though the men could no longer 
see each other, they were led up and their 
hands were joined. When a combatant re- 
fuses to do this, it has always been looked upon 
as unmanly, and we say that bad blood has 



94 MADNESS 

been left behind. So in war we have always 
wished to fight to a finish and then be friends, 
whether we had won or lost. 

Now, this is just what we should wish to 
do with Germany, and it is what Germany 
is rapidly making impossible. She has, in 
our opinion, fought a brave but a thoroughly 
foul fight. And now she uses every means 
to excite a bitter hatred which shall survive 
the war. The Briton is tolerant and easy- 
going in times of peace — too careless, perhaps, 
of the opinion of other nations. But at 
present he is in a most alert and receptive 
mood, noting and remembering very carefully 
every word that comes to him as to the 
temper of the German people and the pros- 
pects of the future. He is by no means 
disposed to pass over all these announce- 
ments of permanent hatred. On the con- 
trary, he is evidently beginning, for the 
first time since Napoleon's era, to show some- 
thing approaching to hatred in return. He 
— and " he " stands for every Briton across 
the seas as well as for the men of the Islands 
— makes a practical note of it all, and it will 
not be forgotten, but will certainly bear very 



MADNESS 95 

definite fruits. The national thoughts do 
not come forth in wild poems of hate, but 
they none the less are gloomy and resentful, 
with the deep, steady resentment of a nation 
which is slow to anger. 

And now, my problematical German reader, 
I want you to realise what this is going to 
mean to you after the war. Whether you 
win or lose — and we have our own very 
certain opinion as to which it will be — 
Germany will still remain as a great inde- 
pendent State. She may be a little trimmed 
at the edges, and she may also find herself 
with some awkward liabilities ; but none 
the less she will be a great kingdom or republic 
— as the Fates may will. She will turn her 
hand to trade and try to build up her fortunes 
once more — for even if we suppose her 
to be the victor, she still cannot live for ever 
on plunder, and must turn herself to honest 
trade, while if she loses her trade will be more 
precious to her than ever. But what will 
her position be when that time has come ? 

It will be appalling. No other word can 
express it. No legislation will be needed 
to keep German goods out of the whole 



g6 MADNESS 

British Empire, which means more than a 
quarter of the globe. Anything with that 
mark might as well have a visible cholera 
bacillus upon it for the chance it will have 
of being handled after this war. That is 
already certain, and it is the direct outcome 
of the madness which has possessed Germany 
in her frantic outcry of hatred. What chance 
they have of business with France, Russia, 
or Japan they know best themselves ; but 
the British Empire, with that wide trade 
toleration which has long been her policy 
(and for which she has had so little gratitude), 
would have speedily forgiven Germany and 
opened her markets to her. Now it is not 
for many a long year that this can be so — 
not on account of the war, but on account of 
the bitterness which Germany has gone out 
of her way to import into the contest. It is 
idle to say that in that case we should lose 
our exports to Germany. Even if it were 
so, it would not in the least affect the senti- 
ments of the retail sellers and buyers in this 
country, whose demands regulate the whole- 
sale trade. But as a matter of fact, what 
Germany buys from the British Empire is 



MADNESS 97 

the coal, wool, etc., which are the raw 
materials of her industry, with which she 
cannot possibly dispense. 

But the pity of it all ! We might have 
had a straight, honest fight, and at the end 
of it we might have conceded that the German 
people had been innocently misled, by their 
military caste and their Press, into the idea 
that their country was being attacked, and 
so were themselves guiltless in the matter. 
They, on their side, might at last have 
understood that Britain had been placed in 
such a position by her guarantees to Belgium 
that it was absolutely impossible that she 
could stand out of the war. With these 
mutual concessions, some sort of friendship 
could possibly have been restored, for it is 
no one's interest, and least of all ours, that 
the keystone should be knocked right out of 
the European arch. But all this has been 
rendered impossible by these hysterical 
screamers of hate, and by those methods of 
murder on land, sea, and in air with which 
the war has been conducted. Hate is a very 
catching emotion, and when it translates 
itself into action it soon glows on either side 
7 



98 MADNESS 

of the North Sea. With neither race, to 
use Carlyle's simile, does it blaze like the 
quick-flaming stubble, but with both it will 
smoulder like the slow red peat. Are there 
not even now strong, sane men in Germany 
who can tell these madmen what they are 
sowing for the next generation and the one 
that comes after it ? It is not that we ask 
them to abate the resistance of their country. 
It is understood that this is a fight to the 
end. That is what we desire. But let them 
stand up and fight without reviling ; let them 
give punishment without malice and receive 
it without wincing ; let their press cease from 
lying, and their prophets from preaching 
hatred — then, lose or win, there may still be 
some chance for their future. But, alas ! 
the mischief is already, I fear, too deep. 
When the seeds are sown, it is hard to check 
the harvest. Let the impartial critic con- 
sider von Miiller of the Emden, and then, 
having surveyed our Press and that of Ger- 
many, let him say with whom lies the blame. 



VIII 

GREAT BRITAIN AND THE NEXT 
WAR 1 

This essay is of some interest, as it was written two years 
before the war, and was one of the first attempts to make 
the public realise the importance of Bernhardi's notorious 
book. The author follows it by an unpublished essay 
called " Afterthoughts," in which he examines how far 
his reading of the future has been justified by the event. 

I am a member of the Anglo-German Society 
for the improvement of the relations between 
the two countries, and I have never seriously 
believed in the German menace. Frequently 
I have found myself alone in a company of 
educated Englishmen in my opinion that it 
was non-existent — or at worst greatly exag- 
gerated. This conclusion was formed upon 
two grounds. The first was, that I knew it 
to be impossible that we could attack Ger- 
many save in the face of monstrous provoca- 

1 Published, Fortnightly Review, February 191 3. 
99 



ioo GREAT BRITAIN AND 

tion. By the conditions of our government, 
even if those in high places desired to do such 
a thing, it was utterly impracticable, for a 
foreign war could not be successfully carried 
on by Great Britain unless the overwhelming 
majority of the people approved of it. Our 
foreign, like our home, politics are governed 
by the vote of the proletariat. It would be 
impossible to wage an aggressive war against 
any Power if the public were not convinced 
of its justice and necessity. For this reason 
we could not attack Germany. On the other 
hand, it seemed to be equally unthinkable 
that Germany should attack us. One fails 
to see what she could possibly hope to gain 
by such a proceeding. She had enemies 
already upon her eastern and western frontiers, 
and it was surely unlikely that she would go 
out of her way to pick a quarrel with the 
powerful British Empire. If she made war 
and lost it, her commerce would be set back 
and her rising colonial empire destroyed. 
If she won it, it was difficult to see where 
she could hope for the spoils. We could not 
give her greater facilities for trade than she 
has already. We could not give her habitable 



THE NEXT WAR 101 

white colonies, for she would find it impossible 
to take possession of them in the face of the 
opposition of the inhabitants. An indemnity 
she could never force from us. Some coaling 
stations and possibly some tropical colonies, 
of which latter she already possesses abun- 
dance, were the most that she could hope for. 
Would such a prize as that be worth the risk 
attending such a war ? To me it seemed 
that there could be only one answer to such 
a question. 

It still seems to me that this reasoning is 
sound. I still think that it would be an 
insane action for Germany deliberately to 
plan an attack upon Great Britain. But 
unfortunately an attack delivered from mis- 
taken motives is as damaging as any other 
attack, and the mischief is done before the 
insanity of it is realised. If I now believe 
such an attack to be possible, and it may be 
imminent, it is because I have been studying 
Germany and the Next War, by General von 
Bernhardt 

A book written by such a man cannot be 
set aside as the mere ravings of a Pan- 
Germanic Anglophobe. So far as appears, 



102 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

he is not a Pan-German at all. There is no 
allusion to that Germania irredente which is 
the dream of that party. He is a man of 
note, and the first living authority in Germany 
upon some matters of military science. Does 
he carry the same weight when he writes of 
international politics and the actual use of 
those mighty forces which he has helped to 
form ? We will hope not. But when a man 
speaks with the highest authority upon one 
subject, his voice cannot be entirely disre- 
garded upon a kindred one. Besides, he 
continually labours, and with success, to 
make the reader understand that he is the 
direct modern disciple of that main German 
line of thought which traces from Frederick 
through Bismarck to the present day. He 
moves in circles which actually control the 
actions of their country in a manner to which 
we have no equivalent. For all these reasons, 
his views cannot be lightly set aside, and 
should be most carefully studied by Britons. 
We know that we have no wish for war, and 
desire only to be left alone. Unfortunately, 
it takes two to make peace, even as it takes 
two to make a quarrel. There is a very clear 



THE NEXT WAR 103 

statement here that the quarrel is imminent, 
and that we must think of the means, military, 
naval, and financial, by which we may meet 
it. Since von Bernhardi's book may not be 
accessible to every reader of this article, I 
will begin by giving some idea of the situa- 
tion as it appears to him, and of the course 
of action which he foreshadows and recom- 
mends. 

He begins his argument by the uncom- 
promising statement that war is a good 
thing in itself. All advance is founded upon 
struggle. Each nation has a right, and 
indeed a duty, to use violence where its 
interests are concerned and there is a tolerable 
hope of success. As to the obvious objection 
that such a doctrine bears no possible rela- 
tion to Christianity, he is not prepared to 
admit the validity of the Christian ethics 
in international practice. In an ingenious 
passage he even attempts to bring the sanc- 
tion of Christianity to support his bellicose 
views. He says : — 

" Again, from the Christian standpoint, we 
arrive at the same conclusion. Christian 
morality is based, indeed, on the law of love. 



104 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

1 Love God above all things, and thy neigh- 
bour as thyself.' This law can claim no 
significance for the relations of one country 
to another, since its application to politics 
would lead to a conflict of duties. The love 
which a man showed to another country as 
such would imply a want of love for his 
own countrymen. Such a system of politics 
must inevitably lead men astray. Christian 
morality is personal and social, and in its 
nature cannot be political. Its object is to 
promote morality of the individual, in order 
to strengthen him to work unselfishly in the 
interests of the community. It tells us to 
love our individual enemies, but does not 
remove the conception of enmity." 

Having thus established the general thesis 
that a nation should not hesitate to declare 
war where a material advantage may be the 
reward, he sets out very clearly what are some 
of the causes for war which Germany can see 
before her. The following passages throw a 
light upon them : — 

" Strong, healthy, and flourishing nations 
increase in numbers. From a given moment 
they require a continual expansion of their 
frontiers, they require new territory for the 
accommodation of their surplus population. 
Since almost every part of the globe is in- 



THE NEXT WAR 105 

habited, new territory must, as a rule, be 
obtained at the cost of its possessors — that is 
to say, by conquest, which thus becomes a 
law of necessity." 

Again : — 

" Lastly, in all times the right of conquest 
by war has been admitted. It may be that 
a growing people cannot win colonies from 
uncivilised races, and yet the State wishes 
to retain the surplus population which the 
mother country can no longer feed. Then 
the only course left is to acquire the necessary 
territory by war. Thus the instinct of self- 
preservation leads inevitably to war, and the 
conquest of foreign soil. It is not the pos- 
sessor, but the victor, who then has the 
right." 

And he concludes : — 

" Arbitration treaties must be peculiarly 
detrimental to an aspiring people, which has 
not yet reached it's political and national 
zenith, and is bent on expanding its power in 
order to play its part honourably in the 
civilised world." 

And adds : — 

" It must be borne in mind that a peaceful 
decision by an arbitration court can never 



106 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

replace in its effects and consequences a 
warlike decision, even as regards the State 
in whose favour it is pronounced." 

To many of us it would seem a legitimate 
extension of the author's argument if we said 
that it would have a virile and bracing effect 
upon our characters if, when we had a 
grievance against our neighbour, we refrained 
from taking it into the law courts, but con- 
tented ourselves with breaking his head with 
a club. However, we are concerned here not 
so much with the validity of the German 
general's arguments as with their practical 
application so far as they affect ourselves. 

Brushing aside the peace advocates, the 
writer continues : "To such views, the off- 
spring of a false humanity, the clear and 
definite answer must be made that, under 
certain circumstances, it is not only the right 
but the moral and political duty of the 
statesman to bring about a war. The acts 
of the State cannot be judged by the standard 
of individual morality." He quotes Treit- 
schke : " The Christian duty of sacrifice for 
something higher does not exist for the State, 
for there is nothing higher than it in the 



THE NEXT WAR 107 

world's history — consequently it cannot 
sacrifice itself to something higher." One 
would have hoped that a noble ideal and a 
moral purpose were something higher, but it 
would be vain to claim that any country, 
ourselves included, have ever yet lived fully 
up to the doctrine. And yet some conscious 
striving, however imperfect, is surely better 
than such a deliberate negation. 

Having laid down these general propositions 
of the value of war, and of the non-existence 
of international moral obligations, General 
von Bernhardi then proceeds to consider very 
fully the general position of Germany and 
the practical application of those doctrines. 
Within the limits of this essay I can only 
give a general survey of the situation as seen 
by him. War is necessary for Germany. It 
should be waged as soon as is feasible, as 
certain factors in the situation tell in favour 
of her enemies. The chief of these factors 
are the reconstruction of the Russian fleet, 
which will be accomplished within a few 
years, and the preparation of a French native 
colonial force, which would be available 
for European hostilities. This also, though 



108 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

already undertaken, will take some years to 
perfect. Therefore, the immediate future is 
Germany's best opportunity. 

In this war Germany places small confidence 
in Italy as an ally, since her interests are 
largely divergent, but she assumes complete 
solidarity with Austria. Austria and Ger- 
many have to reckon with France and Russia. 
Russia is slow in her movements, and Ger- 
many, with her rapid mobilisation, should be 
able to throw herself upon France without 
fear of her rear. Should she win a brilliant 
victory at the outset, Russia might refuse to 
compromise herself at all, especially if the 
quarrel could be so arranged that it would 
seem as if France had been the aggressor. 
Before the slow Slavonic mind had quite 
understood the situation and set her unwieldy 
strength in motion, her ally might be struck 
down, and she face to face with the two Ger- 
manic Powers, which would be more than a 
match for her. 

Of the German army, which is to be the 
instrument of this world-drama, General von 
Bernhardi expresses the highest opinion : 
" The spirit which animates the troops, the 



THE NEXT WAR 109 

ardour of attack, the heroism, the loyalty 
which prevail among them, justify the highest 
expectations. I am certain that if they are 
soon to be summoned to arms their exploits 
will astonish the world, provided only that 
they are led with skill and determination." 
How their " ardour of attack " has been tested 
it is difficult to see, but the world will prob- 
ably agree that the German army is a most 
formidable force. When he goes on, however, 
to express the opinion that they would cer- 
tainly overcome the Fiench, the two armies 
being approximately of the same strength, 
it is not so easy to follow his argument. It is 
possible that even so high an authority as 
General von Bernhardi has not entirely appre- 
ciated how Germany has been the teacher 
of the world in military matters and how 
thoroughly her pupils have responded to that 
teaching. That attention to detail, perfec- 
tion of arrangement for mobilisation, and 
careful preparation which have won German 
victories in the past may now be turned 
against her, and she may find that others 
can equal her in her own virtues. 

Poor France, once conquered, is to be very 



no GREAT BRITAIN AND 

harshly treated. Here is the passage which 
describes her fate : — 

" In one way or another we must square our 
account with France if we wish for a free hand 
in our international policy. This is the first 
and foremost condition of a sound German 
policy, and since the hostility of France once 
for all cannot be removed by peaceful over- 
tures, the matter must be settled by force of 
arms. France must be so completely crushed 
that she can never again come across our 
path." 

It is not said how Germany could per- 
manently extinguish France, and it is difficult 
to think it out. An indemnity, however 
large, would eventually be paid and France 
recover herself. Germany has found the half- 
German border provinces which she annexed 
so indigestible that she could hardly incor- 
porate Champagne or any other purely 
French district. Italy might absorb some of 
Savoy and the French Riviera. If the country 
were artificially separated the various parts 
would fly together again at the first oppor- 
tunity. Altogether, the permanent sterilisa- 
tion of France would be no easy matter to 



THE NEXT WAR in 

effect. It would probably be attempted by 
imposing the condition that in future no army, 
save for police duties, would be allowed her. 
The history of Prussia itself, however, shows 
that even so stringent a prohibition as this 
can be evaded by a conquered but indomitable 
people. 

Let us now turn to General von Bernhardt s 
views upon ourselves ; and, first of all, it is of 
interest to many of us to know what are those 
historical episodes which have caused him 
and many of his fellow-countrymen to take 
bitter exception to our national record. From 
our point of view we have repeatedly helped 
Germany in the past, and have asked for and 
received no other reward than the conscious- 
ness of having co-operated in some common 
cause. So it was in Marlborough's days. So 
in the days of Frederick. So also in those 
of Napoleon. To all these ties, which had 
seemed to us to be of importance, there is 
not a single allusion in this volume. On the 
other hand, there are very bitter references 
to some other historical events which must 
seem to us strangely inadequate as a cause 
for international hatred. 



H2 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

We may, indeed, congratulate ourselves as 
a nation, if no stronger indictment can be 
made against us than is contained in the book 
of the German general. The first episode 
upon which he animadverts is the ancient 
German grievance of the abandonment of 
Frederick the Great by England in the year 
1 761. One would have thought that there was 
some statute of limitations in such matters, 
but apparently there is none in the German 
mind. Let us grant that the premature 
cessation of a campaign is an injustice to 
one's issociates, and let us admit also that a 
British Government under its party system 
can never be an absolutely stable ally. 
Having said so much, one may point out that 
there were several mitigating circumstances 
in this affair. We had fought for five years, 
granting considerable subsidies to Frederick 
during that time, and dispatching British 
armies into the heart of Germany. The 
strain was very great, in a quarrel which 
did not vitally affect ourselves. The British 
nation had taken the view, not wholly un- 
reasonably, that the war was being waged 
in the interests of Hanover, and upon a Ger- 



THE NEXT WAR 113 

man rather than a British quarrel. When we 
stood out France did the same, so that the 
balance of power between the combatants 
was not greatly affected. Also, it may be 
pointed out as a curious historical fact that 
this treatment which he so much resented 
was exactly that which Frederick had himself 
accorded to his allies some years before at 
the close of the Silesian campaign. On that 
occasion he made an isolated peace with 
Maria Theresa, and left his associates, France 
and Bavaria, to meet the full force of the 
Austrian attack. 

Finally the whole episode has to be judged 
by the words of a modern writer : " Con- 
ditions may arise which are more powerful 
than the most honourable intentions. The 
country's own interests — considered, of 
course, in the highest ethical sense — must 
then turn the scale." These sentences are not 
from the work of a British apologist, but from 
this very book of von Bernhardt s which 
scolds England for her supposed adherence 
to such principles. He also quotes, with 
approval, Treitschke's words : " Frederick 
the Great was all his life long charged with 
8 



114 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

treachery because no treaty or alliance could 
ever induce him to renounce the right of free 
self-determination." 

Setting aside this ancient grievance of the 
Seven Years' War, it is of interest to endeavour 
to find out whether there are any other solid 
grounds in the past for Germany's repro- 
bation. Two more historical incidents are 
held up as examples of our perfidy. The first 
is the bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807, 
when the British took forcible possession in 
time of peace of the Danish fleet. It must be 
admitted that the step was an extreme one, 
and only to be justified upon the plea of 
absolute necessity for vital national reasons. 
The British Government of the day believed 
that Napoleon was about to possess himself 
of the Danish fleet and would use it against 
themselves. Fouche has admitted in his 
Memoirs that the right was indeed given by a 
secret clause in the Treaty of Tilsit. It was 
a desperate time, when the strongest measures 
were continually being used against us, and 
it may be urged that similar measures were 
necessary in self-defence. Having once em- 
barked upon the enterprise, and our demand 



THE NEXT WAR 115 

being refused, there was no alternative but 
a bombardment of the city with its attendant 
loss of civilian life. It is not an exploit of 
which we need be proud, and at the best can 
only be described as a most painful and un- 
fortunate necessity ; but I should be surprised 
if the Danes, on looking back to it, judge it 
more harshly than some more recent experi- 
ences which they have had at the hands of 
General von Bernhardt s own fellow-country- 
men. That he is himself prepared to launch 
upon a similar enterprise in a much larger 
and more questionable shape is shown by his 
declaration that if Holland will not take sides 
against England in the next war it should be 
overrun by the German troops. 

General von Bernhardt s next historical 
charge is the bombardment of Alexandria in 
1882, which he describes as having been 
effected upon hypocritical pretences in a 
season of peace. To those who have a recol- 
lection of that event and can recall the 
anti-European movement of Arabi and the 
massacre which preceded the bombardment, 
the charge will appear grotesque. But it is 
with a patchwork quilt of this sort that this 



n6 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

German publicist endeavours to cover the 
unreasoning, but none the less formidable, 
jealousy and prejudice which inflame him 
against this country. The foolish fiction 
that the British Government declared war 
against the Boers in order to gain possession 
of their gold mines is again brought forward, 
though one would have imagined that even 
the gutter-Press who exploited it twelve 
years ago had abandoned it by now. If 
General von Bernhardi can explain how the 
British Government is the richer for these 
mines, or whether a single foreign shareholder 
has been dispossessed of his stock in them, he 
will be the first who has ever given a solid 
fact in favour of this ridiculous charge. In a 
previous paragraph of his book he declares 
that it was President Kruger who made the 
war and that he was praiseworthy for so 
doing. Both statements cannot be true. If 
it was President Kruger who made the war, 
then it was not forced on by Great Britain 
in order to possess herself of the goldfields. 

So much for the specific allegations against 
Great Britain. One can hardly regard them 
as being so serious as to wipe out the various 



THE NEXT WAR 117 

claims, racial, religious, and historical, which 
unite the two countries. However, we are 
only concerned with General von Bernhardt s 
conclusions, since he declares that his country 
is prepared to act upon them. There remain 
two general grounds upon which he considers 
that Germany should make war upon the 
British Empire. The first is to act as the 
champion of the human race in winning what 
he calls the freedom of the seas. The second 
is to further German expansion as a world- 
Power, which is cramped by our opposition. 
The first of these reasons is difficult to 
appreciate. British maritime power has been 
used to ensure, not to destroy, the freedom of 
the seas. What smallest Power has ever been 
hindered in her legitimate business ? It is 
only the pirate, the slaver, and the gun-runner 
who can justly utter such a reproach. If 
the mere fact of having predominant latent 
strength upon the water is an encroachment 
upon the freedom of the sea, then some nation 
must always be guilty of it. After our mild 
supremacy we may well say to Germany, 
as Charles said to James : "No one will 
assassinate me in order to put you on the 



n8 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

throne." Her mandate is unendorsed by 
those whom she claims to represent. 

But the second indictment is more for- 
midable. We lie athwart Germany's world 
ambitions, even as, geographically, we lie 
across her outlets. But when closely looked 
at, what is it of which we deprive her, and 
is its attainment really a matter of such vital 
importance ? Do we hamper her trade ? 
On the contrary, we exhibit a generosity 
which meets with no acknowledgment, and 
which many of us have long held to be alto- 
gether excessive. Her manufactured goods 
are welcomed in without a tax, while ours are 
held out from Germany by a 20 per cent, 
tariff. In India, Egypt, and every colony 
which does not directly control its own 
financial policy, German goods come in upon 
the same footing as our own. No successful 
war can improve her position in this respect. 
There is, however, the question of colonial 
expansion. General von Bernhardi foresees 
that Germany is increasing her population at 
such a pace that emigration will be needed 
soon in order to relieve it. It is a perfectly 
natural national ambition that this emigration 



THE NEXT WAR 119 

should be to some place where the settlers 
need not lose their flag or nationality. But 
if Great Britain were out of the way, where 
would they find such a place ? Not in Canada, 
Australia, South Africa, or New Zealand. 
These States could not be conquered if the 
Motherland had ceased to exist. General von 
Bernhardi talks of the high lands of Africa, 
but already Germany possesses high lands 
in Africa, and their colonisation has not been 
a success. Can any one name one single 
place upon the earth's surface suitable for 
white habitation from which Germany is 
excluded by the existence of Great Britain ? 
It is true that the huge continent of South 
America is only sparsely inhabited, its whole 
population being about equal to that of 
Prussia. But that is an affair in which the 
United States, and not we, are primarily 
interested, and one which it is not our interest 
either to oppose or to support. 

But, however inadequate all these reasons 
for war may seem to a Briton, one has 
still to remember that we have to reckon 
with the conclusions exactly as if they were 
drawn from the most logical premises. These 



120 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

conclusions appear in such sentences as 
follows : — 

" What we now wish to attain must be 
fought for and won against a superior force 
of hostile interests and Powers." 

" Since the struggle is necessary and in- 
evitable, we must fight it out, cost what it 
may." 

" A pacific agreement with England is a 
will-o'-the-wisp, which no serious German 
statesman would trouble to follow. We must 
always keep the possibility of war with 
England before our eyes and arrange our 
political and military plans accordingly. 
We need not concern ourselves with any 
pacific protestations of English politicians, 
publicists, and Utopians, which cannot alter 
the real basis of affairs." 

" The situation in the world generally shows 
there can only be a short respite before we 
once more face the question whether we will 
draw the sword for our position in the world, 
or renounce such position once for all. We 
must not in any case wait until our opponents 
have completed their arming and decide that 
the hour of attack has come." 



THE NEXT WAR 121 

" Even English attempts at a rapproche- 
ment must not blind us to the real situation. 
We may at most use them to delay the neces- 
sary and inevitable war until we may fairly 
imagine we have some prospect of success." 

This last sentence must come home to some 
of us who have worked in the past for a better 
feeling between the two countries. And this 
is the man who dares to accuse us of national 
perfidy. 

These extracts are but a few from a long 
series which show beyond all manner of doubt 
that Germany, so far as General von Bern- 
hardi is an exponent of her intentions, will 
undoubtedly attack us suddenly should she 
see an opportunity. The first intimation of 
such attack would, as he indicates, be a 
torpedo descent upon our Fleet, and a wireless 
message to German liners which would bring 
up their concealed guns, and turn each of 
them into a fast cruiser ready to prey upon 
our commerce. That is the situation as he 
depicts it. It may be that he mistakes it. 
But for what it is worth, that is his opinion 
and advice. 

He sketches out the general lines of a war 



122 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

between England and Germany. If France 
is involved, she is to be annihilated, as already 
described. But suppose the two rivals are 
left face to face. Holland and Denmark are 
to be bound over to the German side under 
pain of conquest. The German Fleet is to 
be held back under the protection of the land 
forts. Meanwhile, torpedoes, submarines, and 
airships are to be used for the gradual whit- 
tling down of the blockading squadrons. When 
they have been sufficiently weakened the 
Fleet is to sally out and the day has arrived. 
As to the chances of success, he is of opinion 
that in material and -personnel the two fleets 
may be taken as being equal — when once the 
numbers have been equalised. In quality of 
guns, he considers that the Germans have the 
advantage. Of gunnery he does not speak, 
but he believes that in torpedo work his 
countrymen are ahead of any others. In air- 
ships, which for reconnaissance, if not for 
actual fighting power, will be of supreme 
importance, he considers also that his country 
will have a considerable advantage. 

Such, in condensed form, is the general 
thesis and forecast of this famous German 



THE NEXT WAR 123 

officer. If it be true, there are evil days 
coming both for his country and for ours. 
One may find some consolation in the dis- 
covery that wherever he attempts to fathom 
our feelings he makes the most lamentable 
blunders. He lays it down as an axiom, for 
example, that if we were hard-pressed the 
Colonies would take the opportunity of 
abandoning us. We know, on the other 
hand, that it is just such a situation which 
would bring about the federation of the 
Empire. He is under the delusion also that 
there is deep commercial and political jealousy 
of the United States in this country, and that 
this might very well culminate in war. We 
are aware that there is no such feeling, and 
that next to holding the trident ourselves we 
should wish to see it in the hands of our 
American cousins. One thing he says, how- 
ever, which is supremely true, which all of us 
would endorse, and which every German 
should ponder : it is that the idea of a war 
between Germany and ourselves never entered 
into the thoughts of any one in this country 
until the year 1902. Why this particular 
year ? Had the feeling risen from commercial 



124 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

jealousy upon the part of Great Britain, it 
must have shown itself far earlier than that 
— as early as the " Made in Germany " 
enactment. It appeared in 1902 because that 
was the close of the Boer War, and because 
the bitter hostility shown by the Germans in 
that war opened our eyes to the fact that 
they would do us a mischief if they could. 
When the German Navy Act of 1900 gave 
promise that they would soon have the 
means of doing so, the first thoughts of danger 
arose, and German policy drove us more and 
more into the ranks of their opponents. Here, 
then, General von Bernhardi is right ; but 
in nearly every other reference to our feelings 
and views he is wrong ; so that it is to be 
hoped that in those matters in which we are 
unable to check him, such as the course of 
German thought and of German action in the 
future, he is equally mistaken. But I repeat 
that he is a man of standing and reputation, 
and that we should be mad if we did not take 
most serious notice of the opinions which he 
has laid down. 

I have headed this article " Great Britain 
and the Next War," since it looks at the 



THE NEXT WAR 125 

arguments and problems which General von 
Bernhardi has raised in his Germany and the 
Next War from the British point of view. 
May it prove that the title is an absurdity 
and the war an imaginative hypothesis. But 
I should wish, before I close, to devote a few 
pages to my view upon the defensive measures 
of our country. I am well aware that I speak 
with no expert authority, which makes it the 
more embarrassing that my opinions do not 
coincide with those of any one whom I have en- 
countered in this controversy. Still, it is better 
to be a voice, however small, than an echo. 

It would simplify the argument if we began 
by eliminating certain factors which, in my 
opinion, simply darken counsel, as they are 
continually brought into the front of the 
question to the exclusion of the real issues 
which lie behind them. One of them is the 
supposed possibility of an invasion — either 
on a large scale or in the form of a raid. 
The former has been pronounced by our 
highest naval authorities of the time as being 
impossible, and I do not think any one can 
read the Wilson Memorandum without being 
convinced by its condensed logic. Von Bern- 



126 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

hardi, in his chapter upon the possible 
methods of injuring Great Britain, though he 
treats the whole subject with the greatest 
frankness, dismisses the idea either of raid or 
invasion in a few short sentences. The raid 
seems to me the less tenable hypothesis of 
the two. An invasion would, at least, play 
for a final stake, though at a deadly risk. A 
raid would be a certain loss of a body of 
troops, which would necessarily be the flower 
of the army ; it could hope to bring about 
no possible permanent effect upon the war, 
and it would upset the balance of military 
power between Germany and her neighbours. 
If Germany were an island, like ourselves, 
she might risk such a venture. Sandwiched 
in between two armed nations as strong as 
herself, I do not believe that there is the 
slightest possibility of it. 

But if, as Von Bernhardi says, such plans 
are visionary, what is the exact object of a 
Territorial Army, and, even more, what 
would be the object of a National Service 
Army upon compulsory lines for home 
defence ? Is it not a waste of money and 
energy which might be more profitably em- 



THE NEXT WAR 127 

ployed in some other form ? Every one has 
such an affection and esteem for Lord Roberts 
— especially if one has the honour of his 
personal acquaintance — that one shrinks from 
expressing a view which might be unwelcome 
to him. 1 And yet he would be the first to 
admit that it is one's duty to add one's 
opinion to the debate, if that opinion has 
been conscientiously formed, and if one 
honestly believes that it recommends the 
best course of action for one's country. So 
far as his argument for universal service is 
based upon national health and physique, I 
think he is on ground which no one could 
attack. But I cannot bring myself to believe 
that a case has been made out for the sub- 
stitution of an enforced soldier in the place 
of the volunteer who has always done so 
splendidly in the past. Great as is Lord 
Roberts's experience, he is talking here of a 
thing which is outside it, for he has never 
seen an enforced British soldier, and has, 
therefore, no data by which he can tell how 
such a man would compare with the present 
article. There were enforced British sailors 

1 More now, alas ! than ever. — Nov. 26, A. CD. 



128 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

once, and I have seen figures quoted to show 
that of 29,000 who were impressed 27,000 
escaped from the Fleet by desertion. It is 
not such men as these who win our battles. 

The argument for enforced service is based 
upon the plea that the Territorial Army is 
below strength in numbers and deficient in 
quality. But if invasion is excluded from 
our calculations this is of less importance. 
The force becomes a nursery for the Army, 
which has other reserves to draw upon before 
it reaches it. Experience has shown that 
under warlike excitement in a virile nation 
like ours, the ranks soon fill up, and as the 
force becomes embodied from the outbreak 
of hostilities, it would rapidly improve in 
quality. It is idle to assert that because 
Bulgaria can, in a day, flood her troops into 
Turkey, therefore we should always stand to 
arms. The Turko-Bulgarian frontier is a line 
of posts — the Anglo-German is a hundred 
leagues of salt water. 

But am I such an optimist as to say that 
there is no danger in a German war ? On the 
contrary, I consider that there is a vast 
danger, that it is one which we ignore, and 



THE NEXT WAR 129 

against which we could at a small cost effect 
a complete insurance. Let me try to define 
both the danger and the remedy. In order 
to do this we must consider the two different 
forms which such a war might take. It 
might be a single duel, or it might be with 
France as our ally. If Germany attacked 
Great Britain alone, it may safely be 
prophesied that the war would be long, 
tedious, and possibly inconclusive, but our 
role would be a comparatively passive one. 
If she attacked France, however, that role 
would be much more active, since we could 
not let France go down, and to give her 
effective help we must land an expeditionary 
force upon the Continent. This force has to 
be supplied with munitions of war and kept 
up to strength, and so the whole problem 
becomes a more complex one. 

The element of danger, which is serious in 
either form of war, but more serious in the 
latter, is the existence of new forms of naval 
warfare which have never been tested in 
the hands of competent men, and which 
may completely revolutionise the conditions . 
These new factors are the submarine and the 
9 



130 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

airship. The latter, save as a means of 
acquiring information, does not seem to be 
formidable — or not sufficiently formidable to 
alter the whole conditions of a campaign. 
But it is different with the submarines. No 
blockade, so far as I can see, can hold these 
vessels in harbour, and no skill or bravery 
can counteract their attack when once they 
are within striking distance. One could 
imagine a state of things when it might be 
found impossible for the greater ships on 
either side to keep the seas on account of 
these poisonous craft. No one can say that 
such a contingency is impossible. Let us 
see, then, how it would affect us if it should 
come to pass. 

In the first place, it would not affect us at 
all as regards invasion or raids. If the German 
submarines can dominate our own large ships, 
our submarines can do the same for theirs. 
We should still hold the seas with our small 
craft. Therefore, if Great Britain alone be 
at war with Germany, such a naval revolution 
would merely affect our commerce and food 
supply. What exact effect a swarm of sub- 
marines, lying off the mouth of the Channel 



THE NEXT WAR 131 

and the Irish Sea, would produce upon the 
victualling of these islands is a problem 
which is beyond my conjecture. Other ships 
besides the British would be likely to be 
destroyed, and international complications 
would probably follow. I cannot imagine 
that such a fleet would entirely, or even to a 
very large extent, cut off our supplies. But 
it is certain that they would have the effect 
of considerably raising the price of whatever 
did reach us. Therefore we should suffer 
privation, though not necessarily such priva- 
tion as would compel us to make terms. From 
the beginning of the war, every home source 
would naturally be encouraged, and it is 
possible that before our external supplies 
were seriously decreased, our internal ones 
might be well on the way to make up the 
deficiency. Both of the two great protagonists 
— Lord Haldane and Lord Roberts — have 
declared that if we lost the command of the 
seas we should have to make peace. Their 
reference, however, was to complete naval 
defeat, and not to such a condition of stale- 
mate as seems to be the more possible alterna- 
tive. As to complete naval defeat, our 



132 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

estimates, and the grand loyalty of the Over- 
seas Dominions, seem to be amply adequate 
to guard against that. It is useless to try 
to alarm us by counting in the whole force 
of the Triple Alliance as our possible foes, for 
if they came into the war, the forces of our 
own allies would also be available. We need 
only think of Germany. 

A predominance of the submarine would, 
then, merely involve a period of hard times 
in this country, if we were fighting Germany 
single-handed. But if we were in alliance 
with France, it becomes an infinitely more 
important matter. I presume that I need 
not argue the point that it is our vital interest 
that France be not dismembered and sterilised. 
Such a tragedy would turn the western half 
of Europe into a gigantic Germany with a 
few insignificant States crouching about her 
feet. The period of her world dominance 
would then indeed have arrived. Therefore, 
if France be wantonly attacked, we must 
strain every nerve to prevent her going down, 
and among the measures to that end will be 
the sending of a British expeditionary force 
to cover the left or Belgian wing of the French 



THE NEXT WAR 133 

defences. Such a force would be conveyed 
across the Channel in perhaps a hundred 
troopships, and would entail a constant 
service of transports afterwards to carry its 
requirements. 

Here lies, as it seems to me, the possible 
material for a great national disaster. Such 
a fleet of transports cannot be rushed sud- 
denly across. Its preparation and port of 
departure are known. A single submarine 
amid such a fleet would be like a fox in a 
poultry yard destroying victim after victim. 
The possibilities are appalling, for it might 
be not one submarine, but a squadron. The 
terrified transports would scatter over the 
ocean to find safety in any port. Their 
convoy could do little to help them. It 
would be a debacle — an inversion of the 
Spanish Armada. 

If the crossing were direct from the eastern 
ports to Antwerp, the danger would become 
greater. 1 It is less if it should be from Ports- 
mouth to Havre. But this is a transit of 
seven hours, and the railways from Havre to 

1 This, of course, would presuppose that Holland was 
involved in the war. — A. CD. 



134 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

the Belgian frontier would be insufficient for 
such a force. No doubt the Straits of Dover 
would be strongly patrolled by our own 
torpedo craft, and the crossing would, so far 
as possible, be made at night, when sub- 
marines have their minimum of efficiency ; 
but, none the less, it seems to me that the 
risk would be a very real and pressing one. 
What possible patrol could make sure of 
heading off a squadron of submarines ? I 
should imagine it to be as difficult as to bar 
the Straits to a school of whales. 

But supposing such a wholesale tragedy 
were avoided, and that in spite of the pre- 
dominance of submarines the army got safely 
to France or to Belgium, how are we to ensure 
the safe passage of the long stream of ships 
which, for many months, would be employed 
in carrying the needful supplies ? We could 
not do it. The army might very well find itself 
utterly isolated, with its line of communica- 
tions completely broken down, at a time when 
the demand upon the resources of all Conti- 
nental countries was so great that there was 
no surplus for our use. Such a state of affairs 
seems to me to be a perfectly possible one, 



THE NEXT WAR 135 

and to form, with the chance of a disaster to 
the transports, the greatest danger to which 
we should be exposed in a German war. But 
these dangers and the food question, which 
has already been treated, can all be absolutely- 
provided against in a manner which is not 
only effective, but which will be of equal 
value in peace and in war. The Channel 
Tunnel is essential to Great Britain's safety. 
I will not dwell here upon the commercial 
or financial advantages of such a tunnel. 
Where the trade of two great nations concen- 
trates upon one narrow tube, it is obvious 
that whatever corporation controls that tube 
has a valuable investment, if the costs of 
construction have not been prohibitive. 
These costs have been placed as low as five 
million pounds by Mr. Rose Smith, who 
represents a practical company engaged in 
such work. If it were twice, thrice, or four 
times that sum it should be an undertaking 
which should promise great profits, and for 
that reason should be constructed by the 
nation, or nations, for their common national 
advantage. It is too vital a thing for any 
private company to control. 



136 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

But consider its bearing upon a German 
war. All the dangers which I have depicted 
are eliminated. We tap (via Marseilles and 
the tunnel) the whole food supply of the 
Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Our 
expeditionary force makes its transit, and 
has its supplies independent of weather or 
naval chances. Should anything so unlikely 
as a raid occur, and the forces in this country 
seem unable to cope with it, a Franco-British 
reinforcement can be rushed through from 
the Continent. The Germans have made 
great works like the Kiel Canal in antici- 
pation of war. Our answer must be the 
Channel Tunnel, linking us closer to our 
ally. 

Though this scheme was discarded (under 
very different naval and political conditions) 
some twenty years ago, no time has, as a 
matter of fact, been lost by the delay ; as 
I am informed that machinery for boring 
purposes has so enormously improved that 
what would have taken thirty years to 
accomplish can now be done in three. If 
this estimate be correct, there may still be 
time to effect this essential insurance before 



THE NEXT WAR 137 

the war with which General von Bernhardi 
threatens us breaks upon us. 

Let us, before leaving the subject, glance 
briefly at the objections which have formerly 
been urged against the tunnel. Such as they 
are, they are as valid now as ever, although 
the advantages have increased to such an 
extent as to throw the whole weight of the 
argument upon the side of those who favour 
its construction. The main (indeed, the 
only) objection was the fear that the tunnel 
would fall into wrong hands and be used for 
purposes of invasion. By this was meant 
not a direct invasion through the tunnel itself 
— to invade a nation of forty-five million 
people through a hole in the ground twenty- 
five miles long would stagger the boldest 
mind — but that the tunnel might be seized 
at each end by some foreign nation, which 
would then use it for aggressive military 
purposes. 

At the time of the discussion our relations 
with France were by no means so friendly 
as they are now, and it was naturally to 
France only that we alluded, since they would 
already hold one end of the tunnel. We need 



138 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

not now discuss any other nation, since any 
other would have to seize both ends by sur- 
prise, and afterwards retain them, which is 
surely inconceivable. We are now bound 
in close ties of friendship and mutual interest 
to France. We have no right to assume that 
we shall always remain on as close a footing, 
but as our common peril seems likely to be 
a permanent one, it is improbable that there 
will be any speedy or sudden change in our 
relations. At the same time, in a matter so 
vital as our hold upon the Dover end of the 
tunnel, we could not be too stringent in our 
precautions. The tunnel should open out at 
a point where guns command it, the mouth 
of it should be within the lines of an en- 
trenched camp, and a considerable garrison 
should be kept permanently within call. 
The latter condition already exists in Dover, 
but the numbers might well be increased. 
As an additional precaution, a passage should 
be driven alongside the tunnel, from which 
it could, if necessary, be destroyed. This 
passage should have an independent opening 
within the circle of a separate fort, so that 
the capture of the end of the tunnel would 



THE NEXT WAR 139 

not prevent its destruction. With such pre- 
cautions as these, the most nervous person 
might feel that our insular position had 
not really been interfered with. The strong 
fortress of the Middle Ages had a passage 
under the moat as part of the defence. This 
is our passage. 

Could an enemy in any way destroy it in 
time of war ? 

It would, as I conceive, be sunk to a depth 
of not less than two hundred feet below the 
bed of the ocean. This ceiling would be 
composed of chalk and clay. No explosive 
from above could drive it in. If it were 
designed on a large scale — and, personally, I 
think it should be a four-line tunnel, even if 
the cost were doubled thereby — no internal 
explosion, such as might be brought about 
by secreting explosive packets upon the 
trains, would be likely to do more than 
temporarily obstruct it. If the very worst 
happened, and it were actually destroyed, 
we should be no worse off than we are now. 
As to the expense, if we are driven into a 
war of this magnitude, a few millions one way 
or the other will not be worth considering. 



140 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

Incidentally, it may be noted that General 
von Bernhardi has a poor opinion of our troops. 
This need not trouble us. We are what we 
are, and words will not alter it. From very 
early days our soldiers have left their mark 
upon Continental warfare, and we have no 
reason to think that we have declined from 
the manhood of our forefathers. He further 
calls them " mercenaries," which is a misuse 
of terms. A mercenary is a man who is paid 
to fight in a quarrel which is not his own. As 
every British soldier must by law be a British 
citizen, the term is absurd. What he really 
means is that they are not conscripts in the 
sense of being forced to fight, but they are 
sufficiently well paid to enable the army as 
a profession to attract a sufficient number of 
our young men to the colours. 

Our military and naval preparations are, 
as it seems to me, adequate for the threatened 
crisis. With the Channel Tunnel added our 
position should be secure. But there are 
other preparations which should be made 
for such a contest, should it unhappily be 
forced upon us. One is financial. Again, as 
so often before in the history of British wars, 



THE NEXT WAR 141 

it may prove that the last guinea wins. 
Everything possible should be done to 
strengthen British credit. This crisis cannot 
last indefinitely. The cloud will dissolve or 
burst. Therefore, for a time we should 
husband our resources for the supreme need. 
At such a time all national expenditure upon 
objects which only mature in the future 
becomes unjustifiable. Such a tax as the 
undeveloped land tax, which may bring in a 
gain some day, but at present costs ten times 
what it produces, is the type of expenditure 
I mean. I say nothing of its justice or in- 
justice, but only of its inopportuneness at 
a moment when we sorely need our present 
resources. 

Another preparation lies in our national 
understanding of the possibility of such a 
danger and the determination to face the 
facts. Both Unionists and Liberals have 
shown their appreciation of the situation, and 
so have two of the most famous Socialist 
leaders. No audible acquiescence has come 
from the ranks of the Labour Party. I would 
venture to say one word here to my Irish 
fellow-countrymen of all political persuasions. 



142 GREAT BRITAIN AND 

If they imagine that they can stand politically 
or economically while Britain falls, they are 
woefully mistaken. The British Fleet is their 
one shield. If it be broken, Ireland will go 
down. They may well throw themselves 
heartily into the common defence, for no 
sword can transfix England without the 
point reaching Ireland behind her. 

Let me say in conclusion, most emphati- 
cally, that I do not myself accept any of those 
axioms of General von Bernhardi which are 
the foundation-stones of his argument. I do 
not think that war is in itself a good thing, 
though a dishonourable peace may be a worse 
one. I do not believe that an Anglo-German 
war is necessary. I am convinced that we 
should never, of our own accord, attack Ger- 
many, nor would we assist France if she made 
an unprovoked attack upon that Power. I 
do not think that as the result of such a war, 
Germany could in any way extend her flag 
so as to cover a larger white population. 
Every one of his propositions I dispute. But 
that is all beside the question. We have not 
to do with his argument, but with its results. 
Those results are that he, a man whose opinion 



THE NEXT WAR 143 

is of weight, and a member of the ruling class 
in Germany, tells us frankly that Germany 
will attack us the moment she sees a favour- 
able opportunity. I repeat that we should 
be mad if we did not take very serious notice 
of the warning. 



IX 

AFTERTHOUGHTS 

So it was so after all. I write after perusing 
what was written two years ago. I lean back 
in my chair and I think of the past. " So it 
really was so after all," represents the thought 
which comes to my mind. 

It seems hardly fair to call it a conspiracy. 
When a certain action is formulated quite 
clearly in many books, when it is advocated 
by newspapers, preached by professors, and 
discussed at every restaurant, it ceases to 
be a conspiracy. We may take Bernhardt s 
book as a text, but it is only because here 
between two covers we find the whole essence 
of the matter in an authoritative form. It 
has been said a thousand times elsewhere. 
And now we know for all time that these 
countless scolding and minatory voices were 
not mere angry units, but that they were in 

144 



AFTERTHOUGHTS 145 

truth the collective voice of the nation. All 
that Bernhardi said, all that after long dis- 
belief he made some of us vaguely realise, 
has now actually happened. So far as Ger- 
many is concerned it has been fulfilled to the 
letter. Fortunately so far as other nations 
have been concerned it has been very differ- 
ent. He knew his own, but he utterly mis- 
judged all else, and in that mis judgment he 
and his spy-trusting Government have dug 
a pit for themselves in which they long may 
flounder. 

Make war deliberately whenever you think 
that you may get profit from it. Find an 
excuse, but let it be an excuse which will 
give you a strong position before the world and 
help your alliances. Take advantage of your 
neighbour's temporary weakness in order to 
attack him. Pretend to be friendly in order 
to screen warlike preparations. Do not let 
contracts or treaties stand in the way of 
your vital interests. All of these monstrous 
propositions are to be found in this vade 
mecum of the German politician and soldier, 
and each of them has been put in actual 
practice within a very few years of the 
10 



146 AFTERTHOUGHTS 

appearance of the book. Take each of them 
in turn. 

Take first the point that they made war 
deliberately, and took advantage of the 
imagined weakness of their neighbours in 
order to attack them. When was it that they 
backed up, if they did not actually dictate, 
the impossible ultimatum addressed as much 
to Russia as to Servia ? When was it that 
they were so determined upon war that they 
made peace impossible at the moment when 
Austria was showing signs of reconsidering 
her position ? Why so keen at that particu- 
lar moment ? Was it not that for the in- 
stant each of her three antagonists seemed 
to be at a disadvantage ? Russia was sup- 
posed not to have recovered yet from her 
Japanese misadventure. France was torn 
by politics, and had admitted in the Senate 
that some important branches of her armies 
were unprepared. Britain seemed to be on 
the verge of civil war. It was just such a 
combination as was predicated by Bern- 
hardi. And his country responded to it 
exactly as he had said, choosing the point of 
quarrel against the Slav race so as to conciliate 



AFTERTHOUGHTS 147 

the more advanced or liberal nations of the 
world. 

Then again they pretended to be friendly 
in order to cover hostile preparations. To the 
very last moment the German Minister in 
Brussels was assuring the Government of 
King Albert that nothing but the best inten- 
tions animated those whom he represented, 
and that Belgian neutrality was safe. The 
written contract was deliberately dishonoured 
on the false and absurd plea that if they did 
not dishonour it some one else would. Thus, 
of the five propositions which had seemed 
most monstrous and inhuman in Bernhardt s 
book in 1912, every single one had been put 
into actual practice by his country in 1914. 
Those of us who advised at the time that the 
book should be taken seriously have surely 
been amply justified. 

It is a singular thing that Bernhardi not 
only indicated in a general way what Germany 
was contemplating, but in his other book upon 
modern warfare he gives a very complete 
sketch of the strategic conception which has 
been followed by the Germans. He shows 
there how their armies might come through 



148 AFTERTHOUGHTS 

Belgium, how their eastern forces might mark 
time while the western, which were to consist 
of the picked troops, would travel by forced 
marches until they reached the neighbour- 
hood of the coast, or at least the west of Paris, 
after which the whole line should swing round 
into France. The chance that by these move- 
ments the German right would come into the 
region of the British expeditionary force is 
dismissed lightly, since he entirely under- 
estimated the power of such a force, while as 
to the Belgian army it is hardly admitted as 
a factor at all. A comparison of the opinions 
of this great military authority with the actual 
facts as we have recently known them, must 
weaken one's faith in the value of expert 
judgment. He is, for example, strongly of 
opinion that battles will not as a rule last for 
more than one day. He has also so high an 
opinion of the supreme fighting value of the 
German soldiers, that he declares that they 
will always fight in the open rather than behind 
entrenchments. It makes strange reading 
for us who have seen them disappear from 
sight into the ground for a month at a time. 
In what I have said in the previous article 



AFTERTHOUGHTS 149 

of the naval and military position, I find 
nothing to withdraw, and little to modify. I 
write with the Germans at Ostend, and yet 
the possibility of either a raid or an invasion 
seems to me as remote as it did two years ago. 
I do not of course refer to an aerial raid, which 
I look upon as extremely probable, but to 
a landing in these islands. The submarine 
which has been used so skilfully against us 
is an all-powerful defensive weapon in our 
hands. As to the submarine, I think that I 
may claim to have foreseen the situation 
which has actually come upon us. " No 
blockade," I remarked, " can hold these 
vessels in harbour, and no skill or bravery can 
counteract their attack when once they are 
within striking distance. One could imagine 
a state of things when it might be found im- 
possible for the greater ships on either side to 
keep the seas on account of these poisonous 
craft. No one can say that such a contin- 
gency is impossible." It is largely true at the 
present moment as regards the North Sea. 
But the submarine will not shake Great 
Britain as mistress of the seas. On the con- 
trary, with her geographical position, it will, 



150 AFTERTHOUGHTS 

if her internal economic policy be wise, put 
her in a stronger position than ever. 

The whole question of the Channel Tunnel 
and its strategic effect, which is treated 
of in the last essay, becomes entirely 
academic, since even if it had been put 
in hand when the German menace be- 
came clearer it could not yet have been 
completed. The idea of an invasion through 
it has always seemed and still seems to 
me to be absurd, but we should have been 
brought face to face at the present moment 
with the possibility of the enemy getting 
hold of the farther end and destroying it, 
so as to wreck a great national enterprise. 
This is a danger which I admit that I had not 
foreseen. At the same time, when a tunnel 
is constructed, the end of it will no doubt 
be fortified in such a fashion that it could 
be held indefinitely against any power save 
France, which would have so large a stake in 
it herself that she could not destroy it. The 
whole operation of sending reinforcements 
and supplies to the scene of war at the present 
instant would be enormously simplified if a 
tunnel were in existence. 



AFTERTHOUGHTS 151 

There remains the fiercely debated question 
of compulsory national service. Even now, 
with the enemy at the gate, it seems to me to 
be as open as ever. Would we, under our 
constitution and with our methods of thought, 
have had such a magnificent response to Lord 
Kitchener's appeal, or would we have had 
such splendid political unanimity in carrying 
the war to a conclusion, if a large section of 
the people had started by feeling sore over 
an Act which caused themselves or their sons 
to serve whether they wished or not ? Per- 
sonally I do not believe that we should. I 
believe that the new volunteer armies now 
under training are of really wonderful material 
and fired with the very best spirit, and that 
they will be worth more than a larger force 
raised by methods which are alien to our 
customs. I said in my previous essay, " Ex- 
perience has shown that under warlike excite- 
ment in a virile nation like ours the ranks 
soon fill up, and as the force becomes embodied 
from the outbreak of hostilities it would 
rapidly improve in quality." Already those 
Territorials who were so ignorantly and un- 
generously criticised in times of peace are, 



152 AFTERTHOUGHTS 

after nearly three months of camp-life, hard- 
ening into soldiers who may safely be trusted 
in the field. Behind them the greater part 
of a million men are formed who will also 
become soldiers in a record time if a desperate 
earnestness can make them so. It is a 
glorious spectacle which makes a man thankful 
that he has been spared to see it. One is 
more hopeful of our Britain, and more proud 
of her, now that the German guns can be 
heard from her eastern shore, than ever in 
the long monotony of her undisturbed pros- 
perity. Our grandchildren will thrill as they 
read of the days that we endure. 



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